Removing keyframes in a clean way?

davidedwards.me

Hi,

If you bake all animation to the Studio Timeline, then later need to completely clear the animation from the character, without removing morphs etc .. how do you so that?

In my case, applied a aniblock in AniMate, then baked to studio keyframes ... now i want to scrap the animation and try something new, but it seems this is impossible in Daz ...!

David

philiphowe

Hi David,

I went through this process of trial and error so I hope this info helps.

In the parameters tab, upper corner, there will be an option to reset whatever object you have selected. You can set the figure back to zero or clear the pose.

Make sure you save before you do anything though as you might hit the ones that reset the entire figure and you'll loose all its morphs as well. I had a great character built on Lee 6, a heavyset butler guy I'm doing and he went back to the thin default character in a suit. (which reminds me, I wish someone would make a decent suit, one with a tie and bowtie, something that actually looks like its not stuck on to the character.

I used enough deformers on this last model to practically build him from scratch.) That is the problem with Daz, its great content but the content has it limitations below the higher end programs that can adjust for the physics.

The timeline is cleared if you use the method above, and you can use Animate2 and Keymate to work together with aniblocks but once you bake (assuming it works right and doesn't reset the figures) then it goes to the Daz timeline and you can tweak arms and legs from there. DONT reuse Animate after the timeline bake or the figure will default back to zero, resetting all, as I recall.

I use the 'animate2-keymate-bake-timeline' method a lot and it works fine, but its still quite frustrating that I can't simply use the timeline to move the keys or work on the graph. (There is a graph in Animate2 but its not as good as Keymate's, which needs work.

There are at least a few youtube tuts out there to get you going.) With Max, for example, you can click on any node or figure and set or delete a key. It's fairly easy and I guess Maya is about the best from what the animators who do this for a living tell me.

Still, it can be done in Daz Studio and those aniblocks are a blast to work with. I hope they keep coming out with more of them for G2.

Not sure if the M4/V4 ones will work on the newer figures and have yet to see a good simple walk or walk and turn combo. I think you can get a plugin for iClone that reads kinect movements to import your own body as animation files but have not see a realistic sample of it yet.

I expect its doable if you set up a recording space professionally. I think you might need 2 conect devices, not sure. I'm hesitant to buy into the pipeline as it all looks more like cartoon work than realistic capture or animations, which is why it might be easier than via Daz.

I will test it all out at some point when I see some samples of something good that is realistic. And I think I read awhile back that you can re-import the boned character back into Daz, but only with the more expensive version if you want a dxf file. (I have yet to be able to get anything but a mapless obj file from Daz into Max 2014, and no bones. The real advantage there is the particle effects and the timeline.)

However, I am using the Octane plugin for Daz and can tell you that, at least as a quick renderer, the quality is exceptionally good once you know how to set it up.

The whole issue with if you have enough vram on the card for larger scenes can be worked out by using Daz's free plugin called Texture Atlas, which groups and downsizes your bigger mats, or directly in the Octane texture window, scalable to 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4th. The animation I'm doing right now was 7gb, now down to 1.5 (works great on my 670 card, although faster on a newer one like the GTX 780 6 GB, $580, which Otoy, the Octane company, recommended.)

Only problem with the sometimes buggy plugin is how it works directly with Daz if you switch around certain things in the scene, like adding a new camera or resetting something.

It can crash but is fairly stable, certainly worth getting and great fun to work with! The grainyness that comes from GPU rendering is soon cleaned over a few seconds to several minutes and I've found a nice compromise of between 1-2 minutes a frame (which you can set a limit of time per frame in the plugin animation window.)

This is still a long time with 3-400 frames ( 10-12 hours total vs 2+ days with Daz). I'm doing 1920x1080, very realistic results with multiple emitters (lights) and complex scenes with more than one G2 figure in heavy costume (kimono, for example, or the stocky butler character with a lot of smoothing and those deformers.

This would render much faster, a few seconds per frame, if it were lower res and I had a simple scene and not rendering in PMC. There are other variables, of course. Their tech people are great, they gave me lots of pointers but the main thing is to watch so the grain (noise) is not so apparent when you bring it into After Effects or whatever post work you do.

The post effects in the Octane plugin are great to work with; bloom, flaring, etc. And the selective focus is simply something that Daz, or any other program that doesn't utilize the GPU, can't compete with under any lighting setup. You can see it take effect instantly and just get cleaner the longer you let it run.

For animations, though, if you're moving the camera around, I would set the camera up so that it doesn't track and doesn't use autofocus or depth of field, which is amazing for still renders. It's OK for simple animations but not if you are following more than one figure.

I hope some of this helps, I hate to think anyone might go through what I did just to learn all this in a short time, but from what I read on this and other forums, there's a lot of guesswork and no manuals that really should be there.

I agree with you about Daz's perspective. I think the company is great, they distribute some exceptional stuff and it can get addictive. And they work with some outstanding suppliers/artists. But they could sure use some improvements on supplying updates, tutorials and the inclusion of a timeline that is much more advanced - capable of graph and keyframing like the higher-end programs. I don't think that would be too hard to implement and thinking of how impressive Daz Studio would be with this included just makes me want to buy more stuff!!! ;)'

Mod edit: Edit for ease of readability.

ajd_at_072df9a27d

Scripts for delete Keyframe for DS3 and DS4

http://www.sharecg.com/v/76963/view/21/DAZ-Studio/scripts-for-Delete-keyframe-and-Locks-V1.3

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/44350/