Come learn the art of 3D computer generated art and animation. This blog deals with the lessons learned and the art created by Robert G. Male using DazStudio from Daz3D.
Also covered are the ancillary software, tools, techniques, and processes needed both before and after rending in the 3D software.
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I bought a little aniMate2 bundle that has the pro part that expires. Turned out I already had the free aniMate2 from before. It's not an issue. I wanted the aniBlocks more than anything else anyway. By time I'm ready for more advanced work it will likely be aniMate4 or 5--I may kludge things together on my own as usual in the meantime. One of the other items I bought at that time were the Belly Dancing aniBlocks. I applied some pieces from it to a figure and ran off an animation that has some issues. Then I applied some pieces of it to my first Daz render that I showed off last time, with a few modifications. The modifications were to take the motion path into account and walk through walls. I also wanted forward movement toward the camera. Again there were some issues. One of them from this second trial with Genesis is very perplexing and wasn't an issue with the Victoria4.2 test run.
Let me deal with the oddity first since I have no good answer what to do with it. I started with a pose because it looks better than starting at the zero position. I put the first aniBlock in place and looked at the animation. Now, the original pose has Genesis' toes pointed up because her feet are at an angle, which actually makes the toes parallel to the ground. Moving forward through the animation her toes stay at that angle all of the time, or at even more of an angle. Not a big deal, right? Well, I zeroed the toes to start, but they still pop up, never mind the fact that the aniBlock should include different toe positions based on the rest of the foot and how the feet touch the ground plane--and it actually does when using Victoria4.2. Aside from trying to modify them for every frame I do not know what to do.
The other issue I had was the same with both figures. Between the two aniBlocks the figures returns to the zero pose, though it keeps its position in the scene. It looks like some of the blocks include the zero pose at the start, finish or both, though thankfully they seem to be infrequent. I did find a fix for when the figure returns to the zero pose in between the two blocks though. The fix is to place the blocks slightly apart from each other, and from the initial pose in the very first frame. Or at least that seemed to be the fix for moving from the first frame to the first pose in the first frame of the aniBlock. However, when you are not looking the initial pose is lost and becomes the first pose of the aniBlock. The transition between the two blocks seems to keep constant at least.
It all comes back to the change or addition I've wanted in animating ever since I started working with it in Daz. There needs to be an ability to highlight a section of the timeline and clear it. Every time you make a mistake or the software does something unexpected you have to abandon your changes and reload the scene, hoping that you saved it at an appropriate point neither too long ago or too recent. It looked to me like aniMate2 included the ability to do just this, but it doesn't actually delete anything. Well aniMate2 makers and DazStudio techs, this is your mission, please accept it.
Music: All She Wants to do is Dance by Don Henley.
