Puppeteer tutorials and the like

IsaacNewton

I would like to start to learn how to use Puppeteer withing DS4.10. I have already come across the issue that I can't work out how to animate the figures hair (which is parented not conformed to the figures head) at the same time as the figure itself. I imagine the same issue could exist when trying to animate two or more independent figures at the same time.

So, can anyone tell me if there are good tutorials that explain how Puppeteer works and how to use it for simple animations. I did check the DAZ store and found nothing there.

mindsong

I've only ever seen the ones on Youtube (emotiguy, liitle pig dude, and a few others), and I think most are in the daz3d.com playlists.

To be honest, I think puppeteer is one of the most underrated features of DS for both stills and animation. It is the simplest way I know to get a quick set of coordinated actions bound together for easy interactive manipulation. Much easier than doing ERC controls and the like, especially if the project is a one-off that won't likely be used again.

If you wish to animate two different elements in the same scene, I would bet that you *can* do it in one puppeteer session (e.g. hair and head together), but I would recommend doing each separately, either saving the results for each element as pose presets (ainmated) or aniblocks (if you have the payfor animate2 plugin), and apply the animations to the target elements in the final scene(s) after-the-fact. In doing this, you can also re-use the various presets later/separately.

Just one approach...

 hope this helps,

--ms

IsaacNewton

Hi Mindsong, thanks for the advice. Yes I was impressed by the ability of Puppeteer to transition between poses as required and on the fly by simply dragging a mouse pointer. With regard to your workaround of animating figure and hair separately, how do you ensure that the hair is animated in synchrony with the figure and not just passing through the shoulders for example?

I saw that Puppeteer has the ability to make Layers. I assumed that this would be for animating different figures such as Hair or other characters so that you could coordinate their movement at the same time. However, I don't see how the Layers work.

IsaacNewton

UPDATE: I found this info on Layers in Puppeteer http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/software/puppeteer/ptr_layers

It seems to be used to isolate movement of different parts of the figure, the eyes, the head etc.

No indication of how to combine the movement of different figures.

mindsong

sorry I missed your reply.

real quick here, the big idea is to use a layer for each scene element.

I start with a clean timeline, do the puppeteer 'recording' of the element onto the timeline, and save the results as a pose preset (which *does* save the entire timeline animation). Then similarly, I do other isolated scene recordings, save them, then finally merge the various pose presets back into the final scene. With each recording, I may use a new layer and save dots that *only affect that element*, by clearing all of the timeline keyframes before setting new poses and then saving those poses as dots. A saved dot will save anyting that has changed from 'zero', so you have to be careful *not* to move the character in any way if you are doing dots on the hair.

Note that by selecting a particular scene element *and its children!*, you can clear only those timeline keys, leaving the rest behind. This means you can configure a character's motion (e.g. a figure walking), then puppeteer record another element (e.g. the hair moving) with the walk, then *clear the original walk*, and save just the hair motion for merging later. (note the converse: if you select a figure element, but not its children, you *won't* see the keyframes and they won't be clearable from that selection, e.g. selecting just the arm, does not select the hands/fingers! to see the arm and finger keys on the timeline, you need to select the arm, then right-click on the arm in the scene tab, and select children, then...wala, all of the keyframes for that apendage will appear. Knowing this saves much confusion for many folks!)

I might use a few extra steps in my workflow, but it isloating things lets me control and verify them more accurately and intentionally, and the thinkgs I save are likely to be re-useable as-is, or with minor edits.

As mentioned above, if you have animate2, you can create and save an aniblock from anything on the timeline (vs saving a pose preset), and the effect is the same, and more flexible later. That's how I do things now, but saving animations as a pose preset from the timeline works too.

Also note that you can really fine-tune your resulting puppeteer recordings with the keymate and graphmate tools from DAZ. This includes using keymate to isolate and clear (or save only) keyframes from specific scene elements and/or sub elements (e.g. just blinks on a figure).

hope this helps - sorry for the late reply - bzbz!

--ms

stitlown

Hi all. This is an older thread, but seemed as close as I could find to relevance to my topic.  I'm a huge user and fan of puppeteer. Like mindsong, I use it for storing multiple poses in a scene and then different layers for different scenes. I'm trying to find if there is any easy way to "copy" or transfer a layer.

Here's my specific issue. I have multiple .duf scene files using the same characters. I've just gone and tweaked a bunch of stuff in an older scene file and I want to bring all the tweaked puppeteer layers "forward" into the new file which has whole new layers for each character/figure on top of the older (pre-tweak) layers. I know I can save temporary puppeteer presets and then load them, but that will give me new layers - which might be fine if the new fully supercedes the old, but is fiddly if it doesn't.  OR I can merge the old file, but then I have separate figures each with its own puppeteer layers.

Is there any way to "copy" a layer from one figure and "paste" it onto another figure and / or to "merge" two layers on a figure into some sort of combined layer.

Interested if anyone has any clever little tricks that might help with this issue.

Cheers, Lx

cridgit

Redacted

stitlown

Thanks cridgit. Puppeteer presets do work, but it's sort of the long way to the shops - I was looking for the short-cut.

A word of warning to anyone looking at this ... the puppeteer data is not stored in the undo buffer. So if you delete and undo, you loose all the puppeteering. Save! Save often and back up. In fact, I must raise a bug report on that, as I've another bug report to lodge.

The other - NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU"RE VERY CONFIDENT - method which may be quicker if there's a tonne of puppeteering to transfer is to decompress the two .duf files then copy the relevant puppeteering stuff (I think it comes under "node" under "scene" toward the end of the .duf, but you should check that out yourself) from one to the other. You just have to be ultra careful you don't add a stray } or ].  Puppeteering presets are probably quicker, and certainly safer, but will not merge layers - that requires manual re-posing from one layer and re-recording in the other layer.

cridgit

Redacted

stitlown

Good on you! And, hahahaha, I only know this stuff because I've had old files that died somewhere over the years or new files where I've mistakenly turned off the PC in the middle of the save and so I've had to dive into the decompressed files to see what, if anything, could be retrieved.

As an aside, as an ex-programmer from the early FORTAN and COBOL days, I am always amazed at how all this fancy-pants stuff is just a longhand flat file when you get to see it in its real format and so easy to both comprehend, and manipulate (as long as you know the syntax and don't bugger up the code-blocks).  The file I most recently had to work on, once rebuilt, is just over 18 million lines! And embedded geometry is only a smaller part of that.

Cheers, Lx