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Feedback like that... I just feel like sharing all the more! Thanks Diomede!!! I really appreciate it!
I do believe it's ready for the public. After a full night sleep, I'll go through everything once again and, if all is as good as it seems now, I'll be submitting it to Daz 3d - see what they think of it! :)
Starry Sky Iray
Starry Sky Iray - Nebulous Wonders
I absolutely CAN'T WAIT for this! So looking forward to it, Dartanbeck! My credit card is ready!
Throughout the entire animation, every muscle in her whole face is moving. The thing that makes it really hard to notice is because it's these micro-expressions that make the face look more natural. Our face muscles are constantly firing in many ways - so we're very used to seeing it on ourselves and other people - every day.
While we might not notice an absence of it in animations without full facial animation, it's that absence that truly helps to sell the fact that it is an artificial CG person.
But much more, creating a workflow for utilizing micro-expressions is what really helps us to define the look of the character throughout every action. So we don't use single, 'fix-it-all' dials to do these. Instead we use what those dials are driving - individually. This allows, say... Peter, to look like Peter no matter what he's doing. How can we tell? By the facial actions. That's how.
We're all incredibly different in this. From what our mouths are doing when we're just sitting there watching TV, reading a book, listening to someone talk, talking to someone, think about something... our facial muscles are always moving.
Getting used to animating on this level doesn't take long once we establish which of the muscles do what it takes to identify This character. Once we have that down, the more generic emotion changes become much more effective.
As we identify these 'characteristic changes' for the specific character, we'll notice that it doesn't take many new custom dials to more easily add the character's identity on the fly, for all animations.
Wording this for reading is one thing - showing you what I mean will be far easier. I'll see what I can do.
Great info, and wonderful animation. Very dramatic despite the lack of 'action.' Hope the Fourth was with you!
Thanks! It was! Rosie and I spent the day celebrating with our daughter. I started watching the new series launched on Disney +, which is quite interesting.
Tales of the Empire is done in the Clone Wars style seemingly through the lens of the folks from the Dark Side of the Force.
Loving Every Minute Of It!!!
Having the opportunity to create my Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio course at just the perfect moment was an absolute blessing! You see, among the data that was lost was every single file used to create the course and all of the Rosie 7 videos - not to mention all of the Rosie 5 and earlier Rosie 8 animations I had saved and rendered - sometimes many times over for different situations.
All of my custom texture maps, FX maps and renders, custom characters... everything that I didn't keep on my C drive, which was just the basic My Documents, Photos, and Video sort of stuff - all GONE!!!
Creating the course took a lot of time and effort with many variations on how to approach making it. This really helped to drive my brand new philosophies and discoveries into my subconscious workflow - which is also what a majority of that course is all about - getting these concepts used in daily practice so that animating in Daz Studio becomes second-nature and the biggest difficulties disappear because we're working in Daz Studio language - and Daz Studio Loves That!!!
Creating Rosie 7 was an exercise in its own right... having all generations from the whole V4 family through Genesis 2 and, of course, she was Genesis 3 Female, so she had a bunch of that into her as well. Using the methods I teach in Part 2 of Dynamic Character Animation, I was able to use GenX2 and Genesis 3 shapes as well as the pose control dials in combination with one another within a single dial. This gave Rosie 7 an amazing ease when trying to design new dials made specifically for Rosie.
The data loss thing left no Daz Content files behind. So I had to start over. The only other option really isn't an option, so... I launched DIM and started downloading my entire Daz 3D product library all over again! Yikes! But also - what a wonderful way to 'see' all of the excellent products I've collected over the years!!!
Genesis 8 worked really well for me. I was going to try and build a Rosie 9 and, in fact I did. But for some reason my computer doesn't want me to animate Genesis 9. I thought about rebuilding Rosie 7 until I remembered how much GenX2 was used in her creation. I knew I could do it, so I had the recipe of GenX2 morph transfers in my mind as a fallback when I opened a Genesis 8 Female to give her a try.
Rosie 9 Attempt:
As it turned out, Rosie 8's entire being is very much a Keep-It-Simple sort of strategy that evolved really nicely right before my eyes. I started animating her right away* and kept my video flow going strong for a while there - doing more and more Digital Art Live work, answering questions, creating helpful guides with links and such on my website... it really picked right back up very quickly!
One day I'm all kicked back as I awaited another animation render or hair simulation, and decided to watch my 2024 videos of Rosie 8. I couldn't believe my eyes! I hate the new "Improvements" I had made to her hair - thinking it was this Massive Upgrade!
The picture on the right shows her New Improved Hair, which looks pretty cool in still frame images - especially after I corrected the tint and hue to match the underlying Classic Long Curly, but I had a hard time understanding how I could have rendered out so many animations without noticing how much I hated the effect in animations! Argh!!!
Keep-It-Simple? Yeah... go back to that!!!
Back to the ol' drawing board? - Not exactly.
Fixing Rosie's hair improvement was as simple as removing the secondary conforming hair from her. If I wanted to use any of the animations, I'd have to simulate the hair again or it just won't look right.
So I took this opportunity to look a bit closer to see if there are any other important changes I'd like to make since, if I'm going to do it - now is the best time!
I decided to make Rosie's head a bit less stylized... less Huge. In doing so, I did a few other minor tweaks here and there. I also reworked the hair settings in all areas - different initial shaping morph settings, different simulation settings in the surfaces pane, and different default settings used in the Simulation pane. This took a lot of tests - and these tests have to use many different animations - which took a lot of time. Weeks!
I also decided that the performance capture examples were doing things to her face that I didn't like. So I started making my own custom dials that I could use to correct what was going on. In the process, I was discovering that these new dials were a cool way to make special "Rosie-Only" facial dials that allow me to alter her facial musculature in Rosie-specific ways that help make all of her facial actions unique to her! Wow!!!
Still in their infancy, the few dials I've made are already a lot of fun to work with!
For Star Wars Day (May 4th) I decided to reuse one of my early tests of the system - this time with Rosie cosplaying as a Fallen Jedi, with wet hair and a different costume (and a light saber!)
The original animation that I reused was Medieval Rosie weilding not a light saber, but Aeon Soul's mighty Legend sword!
During all of this madness with getting the new Rosie 8.24 going, I'm also getting more and more ideas for Digital Art Live performances - which eventually also led me into making a new product for Daz 3D, which still isn't completely ready to ship - but close: Starry Sky Iray for Daz Studio - which is really working excellent!
The whole Digital Art Live thing... I really Love it!!! (see My Digital Art Live page)
That course was a Blast! I was nervous to perform my first webinar - and Solo, nonetheless!!! And most of the things I do (especially with Rosie) are very time-consuming. So I went to work recording my screen as I work through the topics of my course so I could judge myself and try to get the program within a reasonable amount of time.
Well, that last bit was a bust before I got very far. I chewed through waaaay too much time without getting very far at all - so I just kept working and kept recording - at least getting my workflow logged on screen so I could figure out where to go with all of this next.
By the time I was done, I had a LOT of hours of screen capture. Hmmmm...
Okay, in Dynamic Character Animation for Daz Studio, I did the same thing, and then sped up the lengthy processes in DaVinci Resolve afterwards rather than cutting it out. I wanted people to be able to "see" the entire process - even if it was going by really fast. Many video players allow us to speed up or slow down playback - and I felt that it would be best to just leave everything in there - and let the viewer decide. I love how it all turned out.
So I went through the same process with these screen captures and... voila!!! I immediately asked Paul if it would be okay to use the resulting video during the webinar, and narrate live as I play it back - being able to pause as I go, if needed. He approved the idea, but I'm sure he wasn't entirely certain how well it would go over.
It was Awesome! Paul Loved it! The attendees (according to chat and replies I've received afterwards) Loved it too!!! So Cool!
In the process of it all, I created a thread in the Daz Studio Discussion forum and then also made a support page for anyone, whether they attended or not, which also works perfectly for anyone who later bought the course here at Daz 3D! The Power of aniMate 2!!! And if anyone has any questions for me, the support page also has links to the forum page. Replying to the forum page notifies me so I can answer the question, which is a feature I've thought long and hard about doing way back when I started my site as a Help Center for Carrara Users, which it still is - it just has a whole lot more to it now that I'm deep into Daz Studio! ;)
I found myself answering more and more questions regarding my rendering/post work practices - as well as seeing (and answering) a bunch of render-speed-related queries. So I contacted Paul and asked if I could perform a Movie Magic webinar. Now, the last one took two sessions - so it was two weeks of webinar for him to host, so I wanted to give him fair warning that this one would do the same. He liked the idea, so... Bam!
Next thing you know, he invites me to attend a Content Wizard webinar because he likes a lot of the methods I use to organize and find all of my Daz Content using DIM and the Content Library in Daz Studio. So he wanted me to talk a bit about that stuff. Of course I agreed. I Love doing these webinars with Paul, and I Love answering people's questions! That went really well too - and Paul says that he really likes my unique style of dealing with Webinars - that whole screen capture thing along with spending hours and hours each week practicing the topics - getting prepared.
Paul also liked that, in addition to being active in the Digital Art Live STUDIO and Daz 3D forums, I create support pages within my website. After exploring my website for a while, he contacted me about doing free webinars utilizing my love for Daz 3D and their products. In my site I like to get visual and I'm always enthusiastic - because Daz 3D just always does that to me - so I like to share that experience as much as I can find time to do so.
We discussed the series at length, but the reality of it is that I don't think either one of us really knew how it would play out. So for that first episode I just started building it as if I was writing an article for my website, yet also trying to fit it into a TV show type of format or style. So I told Paul that I'll be doing an Animation Corner for each episode. I'm not sure how well he liked that idea, but at least for this episode, the light was Green!
Although I really like the ad I made for it, I'm not sure that anyone really knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew what I was going to do, however, and I had a feeling that anyone who enjoys the pages of my never-ending information site will love the show - I just had that hunch - and sometimes, like this time, my hunch paid off!!!
But armed with the Incredible Star Ship Marcoor and all of its support interior products by Ravnheart, DzFire's Amazing Cyborg Generation 8, and the entire Sci-Fi Moves Genesis aniBlock series by Reisormocap, how could it really have gone wrong, right? I mean... this stuff is right up my alley!!!
The Creative Cart Epsiode 001 - Sci-Fi Marcoor went Very Freaking Well!!!
So without hesitation from the exhaustion of preparing for and performing Episode 001, I began working on Episode 002 in earnest. Before long I sent a message to Paul to let him know that Episode 002 will be called Pestryakov and the Dragon, featuring Andrey Pestryakov's landscapes for Daz Studio along with the Millennium SubDragon for Animation Corner. And since we're using it for Animation Corner, I'll first demonstrate how to work the surfaces into Iray shaders and, as an added bonus - demonstrate how to make a material preset that doesn't overwrite the Base Color maps.
I think he was surprised. I mean... not a lot of time had passed, and he knew quite a bit about the fact that I poured my heart and soul (and Gobs and Gobs of Time!!!) into the first one - that we Just did!
Before I even handed him a promo for Episode 002, I informed Paul that TangoAlpha replied to me and that he will be not only our featured artist for Episode 003, but he will also be a guest on the show! Oh... and by the way, Predatron will be the feature for Episode 004, with Kara Pitat on for Epsiode 005.
Episode 003 - TangoAlpha Super Sets - with Special Guest: TangoAlpha!
It was Awesome having TangoAlpha on the show! He contributed a lot of fun tid bits about his creative flow and inspirations, comments on the products as I presented them, and even gave us a wonderful sneak peek at his upcoming product, which is Absolutely Fantastic!!! At the end he commented that it was interesting and rewarding to see someone else (me) present his products in such a way. Building them and shooting all of the promo images... and then to see them through my eyes as a happy, enthusiastic customer was a real treat.
I was really happy with that comment - because I really do love these works of art that I get to work with in my own projects - my animations... and I really wanted to convey that into the show.
I'm also really happy that Paul loves these and that he enjoys performing them with me - because I am Really Loving This!!!
I am planning more course videos as well - and trying to keep animating Rosie 8.24 along with finishing Starry Sky Iray - and just got back from taking Rosie (the Real Rosie!!!) on a road trip sponsored by my awesome Dad!
This whole Creative Cart thing, however... I think that this will be a good one to focus hard on and keep this thing going as long as I can keep up with it and Paul is willing to host and our Daz 3D fans continue to attend - because the more of these that come out, the better the entire collection becomes. I'm envisioning years of these things and as each episode is completed, it adds a whole new level of cool to the whole series and, years down the road we'll have a nice video encyclopedia of Having Fun with Daz 3D... I Love That!!!
Also, I think that we both get even more passionate and even more energetic when you put us both in the same room together. A certain Magic comes from it that nobody - not even ourselves could have planned. So, Jay... if you're reading this... yeah... I'm looking forward to working with you Anytime!!!
Along with all of this stuff, I've also been forcing to give myself a little "Me" time on my website and just do something fun. Some of it is just taking care of housework - organizing things from the Home page to the categories where they might belong, making new support pages for the things that I do... but also just hopping into the Rosie 8 page and writing about my exploits with her and writing other fun stuff, either on its own or with something else that I already had started... I'm really loving being overly busy because this truly is a Labor of Love!
Speaking of Love, I've also worked very hard to create a whole workflow for all of this stuff, so that I am Always taking time, every day, to doing something wonderful with my Incredible, Wonderful, Beautiful Treasure - My Reason for Living - My Real Rosie - My Amazing Wife!!! Thanks, Treasure! I couldn't do any of this if I didn't have your support and unending encouragement! Rosietreats... You Totally Freaking ROCK!!!
The time has come - enough of all of this talk!
In between working on my Daz 3D and Digital Art Live endeavors, I'm working hard to get the next Rosie skit animated, simulated, rendered, and presented.
We'll see at least slight improvements across the board - but mostly in the realms of Rosie's look and animations quality.
I saw that joelegecko's newer HDRI Photoshoot 2 was made for the new shaders on Genesis 9, so I didn't have it as a priority purchase. I knew then that I should have known better, and now that I have it, uhh... yeah... I should've known better! LOL
Still getting my feet wet with all of these amazing new HDRI that I consider to be perfect for Character Animation Cinematography - just like the HDRI Photoshoot predecessor.
The animations I'm rendering right now for a really cool series of scenes is using a combination of both Photoshoot series, which is working really well. In doing so, I've also edited some of my render settings - fine tuning things here and there while still going mostly for speed in order to get things done in time,
As they say - "With Practice comes Perfection"
Okay, I wouldn't go calling any of the things I do anything close to "Perfection", but I love it! I think they look cool on the YouTube screen - even though they actually look much better before ever making it to YouTube.
It's the Rosie 8.24 improvements that are the star of my next flourish of YouTube short videos - I think.
The face is currently completely animated by hand instead of any form of performance capture.
I originally created the 8.24 facial dials to 'enhance' and/or correct the performance capture to better fit how I envision Rosie's face to look and perform. Well after getting used to working with them a bit, I found myself preferring to just use the dials for all of it - sometimes in combination with the facial pose dials that come in the Essentials bundle for Genesius 8 Female - or whatever generation or figure.
With very few moments to watch entertainment, I've been spending that time with things like the live-action Cowboy Bebop (Netflix), Halo - The Series (Paramount +), The Witcher (Netflix) and things like that.
In doing so, I'm looking carefully at how scenes are established and blocked out... how the beats go... the timing... that sort of thing - along with the actions shot on camera and how that all plays out.
That said, I've been watching and re-watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop a lot because I really like how they put the show together, the cast, the story, the imagination of it all... and that has been helping me to decide how I want to direct my next series of animations and renders. It's funny, it's fun. it's colorful and noir, it's scary, it's romantic, and the freaking music just drives me Wild!!!
So I looked up Cowboy Bebop because I knew I heard the name before.
As it turns out, the original Japanese Anime is on Hulu and it's very nicely dubbed to English without being the slightest bit obvious in that regard. I was impressed! It was then when I realized that the live-action uses the same music - and I think they're even using the same musicians as well as much of the production team. Wow!
It's easy enough to dig up a trailer, so here I'd rather show the opening credits that plays before each episode. It gives a great feel for what you're in for and the Amazing Cast!
One of the new frames composited over a different back plate than what's to come
This one is using one of the new HDRI I got from joelegecko's HDRI Photoshoot 2. It's either #1 or its mirror.
Since I use my own custom base scene to hold all of my render settings and such, I load my Photoshoot HDR images from the Environment tab of the Render pane, rather than loading from the Light Presets portion within the Content Library.
Having one of the Photoshoot HDRI in the dome of my Base scene, simply clicking the dome image and selecting: "Browse", I go right to the folder. Up one level from that folder leads me to my choice between Photoshoot 1 and 2, which is Super convenient!
Damned still images!
In the animation, she cocks the gun and draws the aim and smirks as she leads into the target. So cool compared to this puny still! LOL
I am having Such a Great Time these days!
Day and Night - often forgetting to or just plain forgoing sleep... too much to do... too much to learn... too much Fun!!!\
Digital Art Live
is all about Artists sharing with Artists to provide inspiration, techniques, investigations into future and past technology that help us grow in this incredibly diverse industry - Creating Art - no matter the medium.
The Creative Cart is a series that focuses on Daz 3D store assets in Daz Studio - exploring imaginative ways to use and render these assets while introducing the content more fully than what one might garner from the brief store descriptions.
Each Live Episode is Free to join
- which gets us Full Access to a webinar that invites Q&A, the sharing of community art, guest artist appearances - all during a Daz Studio experience that has been visually prepared ahead of time to alleviate slow processes and crashes, etc., entirely from the main body of the show - which is presented live, during each session, by Dartanbeck and Paul Bussey.
The episodes are then made available to collect from the store at Daz 3D.
Each episode also offers special "Paid" versions that grant the whole recording of the show.
The experience has been Fantastic so far, and we're only four episodes in - and the next is going to be a real blast with the featured artist, Kara Pitat, joining us to share some insight and just have a ball along with the rest of us.
I'm So Excited about this!!!
Kara Pitat (formerly known as "Rane") has been one of those Daz 3D Artists that I've followed closely, and collected nearly the entire offering in the store - these models are So Cool and a Lot of Fun to work with!!!
As I work out my presentation ideas and begin rendering out content for the show, I begin the support page for the episode.
Digital Art Live has a special place for the discussion for the whole show as well as the individual articles and I have special web pages on my site for the whole series as well as each individual episode.
As all of these things grow, the whole Creative Cart system becomes more and more valuable as a resource of inspiration and artistic growth - and did I mention that it's a Lot of Fun?!!!
At Dartanbeck.com:
For all of these episodes - I'm working with content that I Love to buy and use, in ways that I Love to work - and I'm fortunate
enough to be able to give this whole show the equivalent of a full-time job, with overtime - so getting to meet these artists via texting and otherwise is a Huge honor for me - for I absolutely Love the art that they help me create!
I know how to model. I understand the process and have some experience with rigging. I got started into 3D by working with texture maps vs UV Coordinates, and editing it all to get the models looking right. The experience of learning these things has been a real treat - and knowing these (and more) professional practices grant a better understanding of what this content actually is, which helps immensely with Not breaking the system and figuring out creative ways to work with it all throughout my adventures.
Okay, after that whole mouthful
all-in-all, just through the way I present this stuff in Daz Studio always brings up my unique style in some of these techniques that have been very well received by artists that I truly admire - which is yet another honor for me.
As the show progresses - even through just these first four - I can already clearly see that this series is going to be fun to collect and watch again for some fun information that can be helpful and entertaining, colorful and, like I said before: each show is carefully planned to reduce the down-time of lengthy processes, so we can cover more ground and have more artistic interaction together in each show. It's really a Blast!
Ravnheart, DzFire, Reisormocap, Riversoft Art, Andrey Pestryakov, MysticShard, SimonWM, TangoAlpha, Predatron... and now Kara Pitat - and Linday was excited to hear that their amazing assets will be demonstrated at various times throughout the series - as we'll start to see with other artists as well... this, to me, is like living within a really cool dream!
I get to hang out with all of you!!!
which is truly an honor. The artists that hang out here are magnificent and I've had a great time ever since I've discovered Daz 3D.
So I've made the first little compilation teaser for these first four episodes and I can't wait to see how this sort of thing will grow and change as this exciting series progresses. I mean... my mind and artistic muscle-memory are filled with ideas aplenty, and the Daz 3D store, which all of this is about, is one of the most inspirational places on the world wide web - this thing can only keep getting better and better and, like I said before - I think that this series will make for a really cool program to sit back and enjoy as the number of volumes increases - I'm already starting to watch them over again just for fun!
Enjoy this little teaser for Episode 1-4 of The Creative Cart!
Sweet! Dartanbeck Products On Sale Today! 50% Off!!! (30% on the New Release)
...and it's Rosie & Dartanbeck's 27th Wedding Anniversary today too!!! :)
27 years of Absolute Bliss, my Love! Thank You for being my Beautiful, Wonderful, Treasure!!!
Thanks! With the smell of fresh, White Roses filling the air, we're watching The Princess Bride! :)
What could be better?!!!
Ever want to do your own CG Videos using Daz Studio?
It's easier than you might think - and than what you may have been told!
You see, it's not the software. Say what you like about Daz Studio or any other software, for that matter - if, when we render (or even just build) our scenes to mimic the idea that we've brought everyone together to "Film On Location", it's not just the software that might have issues, our computers are going to be spending half the time wondering Why we're doing this! (Okay... just kidding on that last bit!)
I mention Movie Magic because these subjects are primarily what the course is all about - along with other beneficial techniques and practices.
But on this particular subject, one important thing that we can all be doing as CG Filmmakers is to watch as many behind-the-scenes documentaries as we can - especially for movies that do the things we'd love to reproduce, but I find helpful hints in the most unlikely of such wonderful bonus feature shows,
Even still. Sometimes when we watch these, we might see a screen that has the whole production already put together how they'd like it displayed. That's cool... but it's other conversations that have subtle hints of techniques used that really drive some of the most important tips home - and here's my favorite one for making CG films using Daz Studio. In fact, I'd never get the promos for The Creative Cart done every month if I didn't use this Improtant practice:
When animating and rendering the character(s), have a good vision of the surrounding environment in your head - not in the scene!
That's HUGE!!!
Sometimes a simple garbage can in the scene (one that we might not even see - or it might not even be important to the scene) might push our image map total out of reach for GPU acceleration - what a Shame!!!
But there's a Lot more to it than that.
When we render things individually, leaving everything Not in the scene to be rendered invisible to the Alpha channel (I use png Sequence Images), we not only get a Lot better performance from Studio and our computers, but we're also opening up a whole new level of getting the final image to look the way we want it to look!
Example:
We want a character running through the woods. Better yet, she'll be riding a horse through the woods!
When doing this, I keep an effective folder structure for being able to find the elements, even when I'm working on an entirely different project much later. You'd be surprised at how handy these elements can be down the road!!!
If I'd have done all of this as one scene, it might get really heavy on resources and demanding on the render times.
Since I render everything separately, many of these added elements that I'm omitting from the character render actually render at lightning fast speeds - Done!
But even more... now I can alter, say, Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation separately for each element. Add custum (even animated) Depth of Field and other effects that help make the character(s) stand out.
Just before making Movie Magic, I made this little demonstration to help illustrate the text above - you've probably seen it before - especially if you ready this thread:
If this sort of thing interests you, and you like how I present information, you might just really enjoy my Movie Magic feature. It explores this stuff - the way I do it in Daz Studio every day!
This is a fun page that helps a bit to decribe how I go about learning, and employing what I learn - using an example of a documentary from Waaay back to assist me with what I do with modern rendering studio work. It's fun stuff, if you're into this kind of thing! :)
Here's the documetary (just a 5 min. clip of the whole) - as you'll see, using the methods I employ (above post)... we have it a Lot easier and a Lot faster!
In this case, the "Foreground Matte" is what I encourage us to write as invisible into the Alpha channel of our work.
Using Fusion, HitFilm, etc., (any kind of compositing software) eliminates the need for the second matte - the Background Matte.
However, in Movie Magic (as well as the article linked to on this post), I show how I used 3DU's Catcher Plus to create just such a thing!
Hungry for more?
My "Inspirations" pages have a nice collection of just that - Inspiration.
To get there from my main site, Inspirations is in my Gallery section of the menu.
When I get time, I like to add more and more to this area - mostly for my own convenience - but I think others might just enjoy it as well, so I leave it public.
Creative Cart Epsiode 005 - Kara Pitat's Adventurer's ToyBox
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Kara's going to join us as we explore this rather awesome selection of imaginative vehicles, the cool stuff they come with, and the beautifully designed controls that are built into each one!
I've been collecting the Adventurer's ToyBox vehicles and weapons from the beginning, and have really grown to love how fun they are to... yeah... seems strange... Pose! These things are a Blast to pose into stills! The controls that work amazingly well for animations are also Fantastic for 'shaping' the vehicle and its parts into the perfect centerpiece, foreground, midground, background element in the scene - and they really look cool!
Wow, you have been incredibly active. Blessings to you and Rosie for your anniversary. I've missed about 2 months or more of your stuff. Will take a while to catch up. Great to see how you and DAL are developing your content series.
Speaking of which, I need to see what the DAL gang have been doing.
Cool! There's always a bunch of Fun to be had! They're some really cool people! :)
I also just released another bit of a Creative Cart promo teaser - it has the same image as the previous one right now, but it's not the same teaser
Sick!!! Argh!!! What a Horrible couple of days so far!!!
Starting to feel quite a bit better (but still not completely 'with it') I was perusing YouTube on my Roku TV, and happened upon my first Creative Cart promo teaser - so I watched it. It's been a while already since I've watched it through.
I'm so glad I did! This is actually a pretty cool little video - especially considering how quickly and Freaking Hard I had to work to get it done before the show!
Nothing has changed there - I'm still rendering Constantly to get these shows done on time - but I Love it!!! The thing is - before the rendering can occur, animations have to be made, things have to be planned out... often time texture maps have to be optimized, music has to be created, scripts written and recorded (for some things - not the show itself). For the actual show, I record my screen as I work and then optimize the visual experience to negate lengthy operations like load times, switching to Iray view, rendering, simulating... anything that slows down the experience. I perform the shows live - none of my voice is pre-recorded at all, yet I practice running the show several times before the actual presentation. Knowing that, it's funny how much different it always turns out with social interaction - it actually turns out better! :)
Anyways, it's been a while. What do you think of my first Creative Cart Teaser?
I've been feverishly working on more renders for a second promo - then I got Sick!!! Argh!!! I still managed to load some animations that I had already saved and so part of my downtime was still working - which helps. Worse come to Worst, I can always show it during and/or after the show.
When I completed the first promo for it, I had the Arachnid Class Rim Runner MK2, but not the original Rim Runner. Another piece missing was the Dual-Mode Dragonfly. There are still a couple of others I don't have, but since getting those two, I've been having a really good time with them!
Chatting with Kara Pitat this whole time has been a real joy - and it'll be great to have such a cool artist on the show. It was really cool having TangoAlpha as a guest - this will be a lot of fun too!
Getting my hands on the Rim Runner, I had just got paid and went to the Daz 3D store - only to find that it was on sale - so I grabbed the whole Rim Runner Bundle along with the super-awesome Dual-Mode Dragonfly. Wow! What a lot of cool gear!!! That Rim Runner Bundle is a Massive amount of really fun stuff!!!
I love working with the ATVE (Adventurer's ToyBox - Vehicle Edition) especially as an animator. I'll be going through that in the show - these things have some really imaginative control dials to help facilitate how they actually work in the CG Sci-Fi world - it's Awesome!!!
Sound like fun? Check out my page on this particular episode of The Creative Cart!
Episode 005 - Kara Pitat's Adventurer's ToyBox
Wow. Saturday's Creative Cart was a Lot of Fun!
Kara Pitat joined in, which was a Real Treat!!! It was fun to show off these most impressive models, demonstrating how valuable and fun they can be - to the artist who created them! Such a Blast!!!
Here's a sped-up recap of some of what we covered... I Love Doing This Stuff!!!
I really like this one :)
I've started a pretty cool little web page for my new professional tool for my animation endeavors - Cascadeur.
Animating with Cascadeur - within the DAZ Zone on my web site.
What's Cascadeur? Well, besides being the tool that I'll be using to create new animation packs for Daz Studio, here's a really short and wonderful explanation - and my new page goes a bit further with it - and will expand as I get more acquainted with using it:
@Dartanbeck how are you retargetting the Cascadure animation back to Rosie in Daz studio??
They recently removed the import /export features in the newer 2024 version which upset ALOT of people as this program is useless without FBX import/Export.
However one could have gotten a free two year license of the full import/export version if you registered way back in March.
I still have the older 2023 version which has
import/export still and oddly enough they still have older version installers on their web site.
Out of curiosity I grabbed an old 2022 version for linux as a test and indeed it still has the FBX export/import.
So it may still be possible to roll back to a version with export/import for those who missed out on the Free two year indie license offer fo the latest version.
Command > Export to DAZ
I just updated recently (when I got Pro)... so maybe I didn't update recently enough to break my Cascadeur? Hmmm...
But I was confused at first too. It's not under File > Export, it's Command > Send to DAZ