How to clear scene animation and keep figures in place?
DefaultName
Posts: 391
I'm new to animation, and wanted to run a Fluidos simulation. The problem is it runs on the Daz animation timeline, so when I simulate and put the timeline to zero, the figures are all zeroed, everything moves around, it's so frustrating.
I want to keep my figures posed how they are, and then run a simulation from frame zero on that. I don't want to zero my figures. How do I accomplish this? Thank you.
Comments
You might try selecting a figure then saving (File->Save->Pose Preset) that pose as a pose preset. Then zero any animation on your figure and I'd do a 'Zero figure Pose' just to be sure. So you have the same figure with all the animation and poses gone. Then with the figure still selected find the pose preset you just saved in the Content library and click on it. This will put your figure back into the original pose with NO animation to it. So when the animation plays... your figure shouldn't move.
Another alternative would be to select any keyframes applied to the figure after the first frame and delete those.
You need to set the "KEYS" to be visible.
1: Set your figures as desired... (You should be doing this on frame 0, to start.)
2: COPY that block-frame, and PASTE it onto frame 0 (If it is not already on frame 0)
3: Delete any other frames that exist.
4: PASTE it again, at the last frame you expect the simulation to reach.
or...
1: Change your animation to 1-frame, which is frame 0.
2: Pose your models...
3: Change your animation to whatever number of frames you expect the simulation to run. (This will sustain the poses from frame 0 until the end.)
@ lovessuperheroines
I think I can provide an easy solution for you.
1. go to the keyframe in the timeline where you have posed your figures like you want to
2. select all the Figures with Ctrl+click in the Viewport or the Scene pane
3. go to the main menu and choose Edit>Figure>Memorize>Memorize Figure (Pose)
4. go to the main menu and choose Edit>Figure>Clear Animation>Clear Figure (Pose)
optional steps for Items (those can be props and also can be Cameras, Lights, Groups, Nulls... I hope you get what Items are)
5. select all the Items in the scene
6. go to the main menu and choose Edit>Object>Memorize>Memorize Selected Items
7. go to the main menu and choose Edit>Object>Clear Animation>Clear Selected Items
After that all keyframes are deleted from the timeline but your figures and items stay (in the pose) like you want them. That is because you Memorized them with this all currently used property values gest set to default values - be careful with that. You can now also go to a frame and Restore a Figure to the memorized state. If you want the Property values to reset to be zero by default again first use Zero Figure then Memorize Figure.
I wrote Memorize Figure (Pose) in parenticies because also morph shapes can be animated you may better use just Memorize Figure and Clear Figure to take care of the shape not changing. Also you have to Memorize Items / Objects (DazStudio isn't consitent with the naming) if you want to stop those from floating around, btw also even lightning and Surface properties will get animated. You can use Clear Selected Items on lights to stop them from animating their values. For Surface settings you can only save a Material Preset and apply it to the Frame Zero and maybe you need to apply it to other key frames.
Its faster to acces those Memorize/Clear... commands from the Parameters pane Options Menu (the little button with those lines and a triangle). Its even faster to assign a keyboard shortcut to those commands like I did on the F2 to F8 keys with the Window>Customize dialogue.
See my thread about changing keyboard shortcuts here:
How to Customize Daz Studio - to speed up Workflow!? [WIP]
Especialy the custom Menus can help if you don't like to use or can't remember additional keyboard shortcuts.
Thank you all for the responses. I did find the above to work for me. Much appreciate all.
There are some things to consider while using Clear Figure / Items this always clears all keyframes of the selcted from the timeline whithout respecting the Play Range set in the timeline.
You can also apply Clear Selected Items on single or multible nodes (bones) of a figure, this makes it possible to for example selectively clear all animation of a leg from a figure. To do this select the Thigh bone of the figure in the Scene pane, right-click on it and choose Select Children from the menu now Clear Selected Items and the animation of a leg is gone.
There is also a script UnAnimate / ReAnimate DS 1,2,3,4 - mCasual's Daz Scripts doing almost the same thing like Clear Figures / Items (applies to both) but with just a double-click or a single click if the script gets added to a toolbar.
Thanks, a very good guide, please let me add one thing.
I followed this guide and failed many times, finally found an Important thing: should Unlock all bones that you want to clear pose before doing the clear, otherwise the result is a mass. You can re-lock bones after clear if needed.