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Fantastic! Seatbelt - On!!!
Thanks for the encouragement. Right now, watching some of these tutorias again, trying to figure out why I forgot so many small but important details. Such great information available.
There's always so much to remember, and so much more to learn!
Fascinating, isn't it? :)
Watching Jay's beginner Daz Studio tutorials. Problem. The 'fly through' keyboard navigation does not work for me. According to Part 4, with the scene navigator menu icon selected, I am supposed to be able to hold down the keyboard 'w' key to move forward, 's' to move backward, and so on. Nothing is happening. Is there something elese that is supposed to be enabled? Or another key like Alt or Ctrl that is supposed to be held down at the same time?
well I disabled that long ago
maybe you did too and forgot, it is great for messing up your camera settings
Later on in the video, Jay explains that the feature can be toggled on and off by using... Shift K ...so you are correct, Wendy. I must have toggled it off and forgotten. And I think I will leave it off.
Really? I find it to be the quickest (?) way to zoom around. I have yet to find a decent way to navigate DS other that to create a primive, scale it to the field I want, and center on it. Sometimes I really miss only working in Carrara! LOL
I often place nulls around the scene to use that framing navigation tool on
does the same as hitting 0 in Carrara
Not quite as good though. For example, if something is placed inside a group (in DS), sometimes the framing tool still puts us waaaaaaaaay too far away.
In those situations, I create a primitive cube or sphere, align it to what I want to look at and, while I'm still waaaaaay to far away, I can see the scale of my cube as I bring it up or down to where I want my view, then frame on that and delete it. Works like a charm. It's still not nearly as nice as being able to just quickly navigate the scene as we can in Carrara - with it's various scene magntude level settings. Love that!
well that's why I create nulls
does the same thing as your cubes and I don't need to delete them
Right. I use Nulls too, but for some things that gets me waaaaay too close
I also use nulls and primitives to aid navigation. Do you think it is a Carrara-veteran thing? Jay is a Carrara veteran and entered the monthly challenge for the 'Give Me a Sign' theme.
Alberto released a Text Modeler for Studio. It is interesting to me that Howie released a replicator add on (ultra-scatter) to mimic Carrara and now Alberto has released a text modeler. Who is going to release the Metaball modeler? Not just a metaball sticky, but an actual modeler? There is a store item that will goop blobs all over your figure.
I hope to be through the rest of the public MasterClass tutorials by close of business today. Then I will start on the Masterclass tutes for Daz+.
Alvin Bemar, of course!
Well, it's a matter of survival as a PA.
With Daz 3d dropping future development and non-active PA products for Carrara, the signs were clear - and who can blame them?
A - Daz Studio was born at Daz 3D. They had a vision, the vision expanded and continues to expand - but clearly.
B - Carrara and Bryce were purchased by Daz 3D to offer to their customers, yet a clear path for evolution is not something that Daz 3D continued to feel as time passed - but they did amazing advancements to both before dropping their development.
C - These visionary PAs, wanting to stay in the game had to take a closer look at the growing advancements of Daz Studio, which has Really taken off since the initial release of 4.0
Seeing how serious Daz 3D was at making Daz Studio into the perfect content creation monster of a platform, yet feeling that NEED for some of Carrara's beneficial features in order to do their thing in Studio instead of Carrara, they entered into Deep Learning and a Ton of R&D.
After recently joining the ranks of Daz Studio users, I can absolutely see why they'd make that leap. What a great tool this is!
So, while I've purchased a bit of Howie's tools and scenes, as well as some of Alvin's and others, I haven't had much time to playwith them yet. With my animation workflow discoveries and creations, I've been Go! ever since - and it just keeps getting more and more amazing!
Then I get to doing Space scenes. Ungh... that reminded me of when I first started trying to do space scenes in Carrara: "Use NASA Hubble Images". It just doesn't look right in 3D animations. Maybe I'm missing something on how to do it right?
So now I'm deep into the new Starry Sky Iray for Daz Studio. Wow... full circle?
I'm pretty sure that there's a feature in Studio that allows us to set the speed at which the mouse wheel zooms in and out. I need to watch my Basics tutorials again - I think it's in there.
IMO it is great for one thing, loading DAZ content
yes if you want to pose and animate DAZ characters with their native rigging JCMs etc DAZ studio is the way to go
if you want to do anything else such as render realistic architecture, landscapes, non DAZ content etc well just about anything but DAZ studio shines at that
Maya probably being the top least affordable choice, Blender the most affordable but not so intuitive one.
I am going through the Intermediate level videos of Jay's MasterClass on the Daz Help menu. (Have to be Daz+ yet? Not sure). More shout outs to @Dartanbeck. (a) Jay highlights nice tip by Dart on disabling lights visibility in the draw settings pane for the viewport. (b) Jay visits Dart's website as part of the history of Victoria, Michael, Poser, Daz Studio, etc.
I want to be able to create my own recurring characters, like Dart has his Rosie. Daz Studio is one option for rigging figures, not just rendering them. Blender is another good option, but I have a lot of Studio-compatible content now.
I now have a few competing projects in my head. (1) Brash Lonergan and Moxie Espinosa in a scifi serial loosely in the tradition of Crash Corrigan, Flash Gordon, Rocky Jones, Buck Rogers, etc, etc, etc, with a healthy dose of 'Support Your Local Sheriff' and Rockford Files thrown in. (2) Comedy shorts with a recurring 'clown' character I have in mind loosely based on the silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, with later interpretations by the likes of Lucille Ball, Benny Hill, Rowan Atkinson. And Jackie Chan! I don't mean an actual clown, I just mean the person around whom the comedy sketches revolve. (3) Adventure stories set in the late 19th century and early 20th century - the dawn of the telephone, bicycles, early automobiles, etc.
I am giving myself one combined subscription period to gather tools. So New Year's resolution? Do lots of tutorials for Daz Studio, Blender, ZBush, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, etc. Create the basic sets, major props, characters, and costumes that will give my look for (1), (2), and (3) the way Dart has his Rosie and his universe. And during the learning period, offer some my tests that rise to the level of acceptable to the community as freebies.
Trying to balance watching tutorials and practicing the lessons of the tutorials.
Thanks for the shout-out!
One thing that helps me a lot, I think, is that I've finally decided to stop trying to chase all of these different software solutions to everything. Examples:
I Love to model - I love animating and character personalization more
Solution - Daz 3D already has Great character kits at Phenominal prices - so if I want to model, I leave it to things other than my characters. I'm not as good at it as Daz 3D and their band of amazing PAs!
I love texturing - I love the textures I can get for my characters through Daz - based on real photography - expertly mapped
Solution - I buy in my character's textures via the character packs and edit my chosen character maps for the makeup and eyes, etc., that I might want to tweak - and move on.
More Solution - I buy legacy models and enhance them with my own texturing/shader-building skills. In Studio I don't really have Actual Shader-building skills, so I use shaders from something I really like and use my own maps in the shader to suit the model I'm working on. Copy/Paste is my friend - as is Affinity Photo and PD Howler!
I Love animating! The sheer joy I get when I pull off a nice, natural motion on my own feels So Rewarding!
However, to actually get any of my work done, I need help. My animation sessions are for a final viewable result of somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds - sometimes longer, often times even shorter. One of the 5 second (210 frames following my 30 frame buffer zone - so 240 actual frames) animations generally takes one to two hours just to simulate the hair if I get it right the first time, which I often do these days.
So to get what I want to do done in a more timely fashion, I use aniBlocks and other animated pose files, FBX, BVH, etc., No matter the initial format, they All end up as aniBlocks if I intend to use them.
Using those motion captures or hand animations as my base character movement, I then change it to the vision of the motion I wanted my character to be doing - which is almost Never the same as the actual aniBlock I'm using. So this not only helps me to get the animation process started, it also offers me the chance to do my own key frame animation over that result - so I still get that rewarding feeling and get my short clips done in much better time. Not to mention the fact that these aniBlocks have all sorts of little nuances to them that add to the final outcome. I often pick my Base aniBlock because of the little things - knowing I can change the rest myself. It's all part of the fun.
Back when I scattered myself around a bunch of different software solutions for this and for that, I found myself in a never-ending cycle of strictly learning - not getting anything done. It was still a lot of fun for me. I enjoy learning software, which was how I took to Daz Studio so quickly. I mean... I literally just started using it a few years ago.
And that's when the magic happened. The idea of trying to make Daz Studio my workhorse software led me to trying a character that came set up for Iray out of the box, without doing anything to the scene. I didn't know what to do in Studio anyway - I just wanted to see what an Iray-optimized Daz figure looked like in the Iray Viewport. At that time I didn't have many of them. I was allergic to items sold under DUF-Only. An unnecessary fear I had as a Carrara user. I did have Teen Josie 8, some simple hair and an outfit. When I turned on Iray in the viewport, I nearly fell out of my chair - and it was happening rather quickly. Oh My! Look at that SSS in the skin!
It took me a while after that point to actually come up with a new Rosie character that I really liked - which was Rosie 7. By that time I was more interested in seeing her in action, within finished renders, than I was in studying software.
I spent no more time learning other software, some of my time at WP Guru on YouTube (my pal, Jay Versluis), much more time learning to come up with a good animation workflow in Daz Studio (my course are the results of that) and, during those times of simulating and rendering, I'd spend perusing the store for assets that would make me happy in this whole endeavor.
Very tight on financial resources, I didn't always buy what I liked, but would at least put them into my wish list for further review and/or purchase when I had the funds.
That has become my new flow. Work. shop, repeat.
Always on the lookout for cool new outfits, hair, etc., after a while I didn't need to make that as much of a priority as I had a constant flow coming in via Daz +, so recently my attention has been turned toward scripts and plugins and such that benefit me as someone wanting to make motion pictures.
The Philosopher's iReal products!!! Yes! Making my own VFX footage within Daz Studio? That's a HUGE WIN!!!
aniBlocks, more aniBlocks, and even more aniBlocks. I want to collect every last one of them!
Riversoft Art's Bone Minion products! Finding those- - more specifically, finally looking at them, seeing what they do, and trying one completely changed my life!
Being such a huge GoFigure/Reisormocap fan, my next Bone Minion product was the complete Generation 4 Poses bundle, so my M4/V4 aniBlocks and animated PZ2s would work out of the box on Any of my Genesis generations - and I use them All up to Genesis 8 - 8.1 for some monsters. The people and the Genesis 9 figures tend to crash my Studio, so I'm holding off on those for now - which is fine. Lots of other stuff!
Getting the Genesis 2 Poses Bone Minion allows me to use my FBX downloads from Mixamo on any generation, and 3D Universe's Body2Hip (another new discovery for me) allows me to turn them into Perfect aniBlocks!!! Now That's a Huge Win!!!
One of my students in The Power of aniMate 2 course mentioned (and later detailed) 3D Universe's Pose Architect products. Something I wouldn't even look at since I do my own poses when I'm not animating. Oh My!!! Pose Architect is like the custom dials I teach how to make in Dynamic Character Animation for Daz Studio, but on steroids! So now I have those too - and I love how they work with my own dials - though, for my animation work, I find my own custom dials to be even more essential, these are Perfect for adding all sorts of additional nuances to the final animation.
So tools became a target for my shopping experience.
Wow, has my day-to-day ever changed. I glance over at my software manuals that used to consume my day and smile. I love those tomes - I do! I like rendering animation much more.
Solution - Have Fun Animating in Daz Studio - forget the rest!
@Dartanbeck - You have definitely found your Muse!
Error Fatality, Error Fatality
I am following along with Jay Versluis's Masterclass. I got an error following Part 37 for using the Hexagon Bridge. Jay sent the G8M George character with shorts and a tshirt through the bridge to Hexagon to fix some poke through. I sent G8F Janet with a dress through the bridge to Hexagon. Used an extreme pose to get some poke through for something to fix. While Hexgon did open, and the Daz figure and clothing item appeared, the running version of Daz Studio gave this fatal error, which I could see while in the Hexagon interface. I know it is not a general bridge error because I had successfully followed Jay's use of the Daz to hexagon bridge errlier in Part 37 for creating a morph for a primitive.
Wow. Did I really write all of that? Eeee Gaaaads!!!
I get that error from time to time - especially if I've had DS open and busily working for long periods without closing it and restarting it.
So my new flow is to close DS after I'm done with an animation (saved), before moving on to the next.
Since the most recent update, DS starts back up again very quickly! I mean... I don't have to wait long before launching it again.
I personally don't bother with the bridge to the slums when I can just export an obj for editing in Carrara's vertex room and use morphloader, hell sometimes I even use Zbrush
All awesome options.
...and for simply fixing pokethrough, I either use Mesh Grabber and make a morph for just that session, or I use the trusty Geometry Editior to select and hide the protruding polygons on the figure itself - whichever makes the most sense at the time.
Of course, I'm also a huge fan of Fit Control products, so I'll use that too.
When I auto-fit boots to Rosie, and the fit puts the feet outside the shoe and above it, but I can still get a decent pose, I select a portion of the shins and all of the feet and toenails using the marquee selection in the Geometry Editor, and create a new surface, which I make transparent - and then just save that version of her as a separate scene file within the Base Scene I use for her. Rocks!
This entire video was made using a version of Rosie using the "Hide Feet For Boots" Surface added. She was Genesis 3 and the Genesis 8 Boots had that issue of the shoe portion being located under her foot.
So also for that version of Rosie save, I shortened the legs to get the proportions back. It was really crazy when I was using that version and try on a different costume - those short legs! Didn't always catch it! LOL
Oh... except for that first scene when she flies in on the back of an Eagle. That was actually Rosie 5 of Genesis 1. She was pretty cool by that time too.
Yes, I will probably ignore the bridges in the end. Still early in my 2024 tutorial deep dive, but my initial reactions to the tutorials leans toward using the manual file transfers between programs, and to use Blender a lot more, including its sculpting tools for adjustment morphs. Like you Wendy, I am fine with using the morph loader manually. I am also testing the workflow for a few other software options like ZBrush and Marvelous Designer. ZBrush is awesome, very awesome!, but it is hard to justify the expense given my current amount of usage. Marvelous Designer is also awesome. Similarly, it may be too expensive for how much I would use it. But there is not a good substitute for what MD does, like Blender's sculpt tools substituting for ZBrush.
Yes, I use a variety of tools for occasional poke through. There are a lot of options to address the one-offs resulting in a specific scene. Great to have so many options. Sometimes, I even still use the magnet deformers.
Ralph Bakshi would love this! Know you are a fellow fan. You have a real feel for adventure. Rosie rocks! (Down with the baddies).
Speaking of bridge errors, manual transfers between programs, morphs, and Jay's Masterclass, I need to park some screenshots as reminders of some settings related to Blender.
Part 2.