Animating in Daz Questions - Puppeteer woes Y values SOLVED!
ghastlycomic
Posts: 2,531
How do I control the speed at which the time line plays back an animation. If I want to preview it at 3/4 or 1/2 speed so I can spot where exactly things need adjusting is there a way to do that?
The tools I have are graphmate, keymate, and animate2
Post edited by ghastlycomic on
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Frames per second. Default is 30, I think you want SLOWER which would be 15 for half standard and 7 for even slower.
And below... FPS is far right lower corner in DS Timeline.
I thought the FPS just changes the number of frames it renders. The playback speed in the preview seems to remain unchanged only now it takes 15 frames to do a second.
Also, I take it you should turn limits off when you're animating. But I notice that when I'm moving something around with the pupeteer with the limits off the figure starts to get all twisty looking even though I'm not moving it in a way that takes the figure beyond what its limits would be. Is there a way to fix this?
I recommend rendering to an 'Image Series', later in the software you use to make an .avi, you have more control over the speed.of playback.
Seems like a rather inefficient process just to preview an animation to fine to it if I can't watch the preview in the same software I'm animating in.
So the process is animate a figure. Do a low quality preview render. View that in another program with adjustable playback speed, count the frames and write down what needs to be adjusted in what frames. Then go back to Daz and make the adjustments then do another low quality preview render?
Ouch!
Wouldn't it just make more sense for Daz to put in a feature to allow you to adjust the speed of the preview animation?
You could do the following:
- render to .avi (it's a test anyway)
- import the avi in VirtualDub (free)
- adjust the frame-rate in the 'output video pane' (lower or higher setting)
I just checked that in VirtualDub.
Blender and Gimp have almost the same featues.
Hopefully they'll fix this flaw with the timeline preview in a future version. I suppose I can just click through frame by frame at the speed I want to preview the timeline at.
Which brings me to the second problem I'm having trying to animate in this software.
I can make a pose in Puppeteer and it looks fine in edit mode. But then when I go to preview or record mode none of the joints are where they're supposed to be. Arms are all akimbo. The only way I can get the limbs to be where they are supposed to be is to turn limits off even though none of the poses I create exceed the limits of the figure's rig. Now the problem is when the figure goes through its paces the limbs start to get weird twists and turns to them as if they were exceeding the rig's limits even though they aren't. When I preview the animation with the timeline the figure looks fine, there's no distortion in the limbs. But when I render the animation the limbs are all twisted up again.
How do I get Puppeteer to work with limits on?
Okay, I tried using Puppeteer with the Genesis figure and it works with the limits on no problem. But with my Ghastly Chibi figure it doesn't work when the limits are on.
Any ideas why this is the case?
I misunderstood the Question I was addressing play back within DAZ Studio only in the Viewport.
Okay this is getting REALLY weird now.
I`ve discovered what`s going weird with the puppeteer and my Chibi figure.
I set a pose, say X to -45 and Y to 90. I put the pose into Puppeteer but Puppeteer is recording it as X= -22.5, Y=90 and Z=-22.5
It`s splitting the difference between the X and Z values. Which is why nothing looks right with the limits on.
This is the figure in question if anyone wants to see if they can replicate these results.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/73342/view/21/DAZ-Studio/Ghastlys-Ghastly-Chibi-REV-1.01
I`ve been doing a number of different poses with it and it is only the arms that are affected by this bug. The results to the arms are not always the same. Sometimes the X and Z get the difference split, other times the Y value changes. It all seems to depend upon the pose.
Okay, I`m getting closer to tracking down this bug. It seems if the Y value for the arm joints is a value greater than 90 things start to go haywire with the values that puppeteer records for the pose. Is this a bug in puppeteer or is this somehow a bug in my rigging?
Getting closer still. I noticed other figures that had arms where the y value exceeded 90 would also split the difference between the X and the Z Genesis sets a limit on the upper arm of 75 degrees. If I turned limits off and moved it to 90 then the difference between the X and Z gets split, so this is a bug that affects Genesis too, it is just that it's upper arm limit doesn't exceed 90.
The lower arm however does exceed 90 and yet it is not affected by the bug.
TAH DAH! I figured it out.
If you have a horizontal bone the Y value can never be more than 90/-90. So put the Y rotation orientation so it won't exceed 90.
So for the shoulder you can have the bones XYZ orientation and then limit the Y rotation to 89/-89 maximum. Then for the fore arm, since forearms bend significantly more than 90 degrees but have no side to side movement set the orientation to XZY, the Y will be limited at 0/0 and the Z rotation will take care of your bending.
For straight up posing none of this matter, but it would seem animation is different. I'm glad I solved this but can someone explain to me the why of this?