Keyframes not keeping my modifications

Sparkie Shock

Hey,

Been trying out the animation feature in DAZ. The Animate blocks are interesting but too glitchy to use for a professional movie .. I find my character is very jerky when coming out of one block and going into another. No big deal .. I don't mind animating the character myself .. But that's the problem.

I'm finding that if I want to so much as introduce a tilt of the head .. or a lift of the hand .. I'll make the adjustment, but then as soon as I move the playhead the settings I just input for manual movement are reset to what it was.

I can imagine it's the animate blocks overriding the stuff I'm trying to do. Seems that Animation in DAZ is possible but by no means is it all that great ... OR? .. am I wrong?? I sure hope so .. sure as hell can't afford Carrara right now .. though I admit after seeing what that program can do I'll be buying it later on.

But for the meantime I'm stuck with DAZ. I can live with this if I can just get manual control over the characters movements. And even though the Animate blocks are really jerky it's still a start point for me and I'd rather like to modify some of the body movement.

So does anyone know how to get manual control, at least over the arms, hands and head?

DUDU

I suppose that you speak about “Studio”…
I don't work with that but I think that the aniblocks are the equivalents of the NLA clips of Carrara, except in Carrara we creates them oneself after having finished his animation on the normal tracks.
The edition of the NLA is possible, but there are some limitations (not “undo” e.g.).
I use 3 various manners to create my animations:
1- to do all manually (very easy in Carrara).
2- to import a file .bvh as base (often to edit manually).
3- to make animation in Poser (walkdesigner) and importing the .pz2 file in Carrara.
When I'm satisfied with my animation, I converted it into NLA clip for later use or mix with other NLA tracks.

bigh

scott said:

Hey,

Been trying out the animation feature in DAZ. The Animate blocks are interesting but too glitchy to use for a professional movie .. I find my character is very jerky when coming out of one block and going into another. No big deal .. I don't mind animating the character myself .. But that's the problem.

I'm finding that if I want to so much as introduce a tilt of the head .. or a lift of the hand .. I'll make the adjustment, but then as soon as I move the playhead the settings I just input for manual movement are reset to what it was.

I can imagine it's the animate blocks overriding the stuff I'm trying to do. Seems that Animation in DAZ is possible but by no means is it all that great ... OR? .. am I wrong?? I sure hope so .. sure as hell can't afford Carrara right now .. though I admit after seeing what that program can do I'll be buying it later on.

But for the meantime I'm stuck with DAZ. I can live with this if I can just get manual control over the characters movements. And even though the Animate blocks are really jerky it's still a start point for me and I'd rather like to modify some of the body movement.

So does anyone know how to get manual control, at least over the arms, hands and head?

one way -

load aniBlock to DS timeline
click ( head or etc )
then goto at the top of DS
edit
figure
clear animation
clear item or clear pose
this should get you on your way

Deke

Daz Studio and Animate2 take a bit of getting used to, but I'm getting some good results with the help of the KeyMate plug in…it allows me to slip and slide keyframes to get a better look. I've found that adjusting the time-length of aniblocks is also helpful. I took the standard walk cycle and slowed it down to 85% of normal and it seems much smoother. There is a handy series of quick videos on youtube by GoFigure that walk through the Animate2 features, including how to trim and customize blocks.

jaebea

Here is the tutorial that deals with editing aniblocks. It's done in layers and will overwrite the original animation. I do it all the time and it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NsLiVaEn2E&list=PL0BB84111C070D080&index=14

Sparkie Shock

Thanks for the replies everyone. I realize there's a lot to learn but I'm very hopeful that I can do the kind of animation in DAZ that I'm looking for. If I can produce several episodes of my stories with this I'll certainly look at upgrading to Carrara.

Tried doing simple walking scene with some movement and lights and such. Rendered it at 60 fps so I could slow it down and get a really dramatic walk (not sure how one slows down or speeds up things without Keymate). It look REALLY cool. except that at the end of each Aniblock, parts of my character suddenly jump to a reset point making the animation look really jerky. (Took my Mac Pro 24 hours to render this 5 second scene :P), but it did show me that if I can learn how to control animation, I can really make something special.

Take a look:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4q2v30o4h867b1k/Aerial-Walk-Test-2.mp4

And again thanks all for your advice .. I'll be sure to check out those tutorials.

Deke

In Animate there is a box with 100% in it. This controls the speed. type in 50% and the motion takes twice as long. Type in 200 and it goes twice as fast. I found the stock walk cycle at 85% creates a nice saunter. I'm not sure, but I assume that the program is adding keyframes, so there is more information here…much the same as rendering at 60 FPS.