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For skirts I like to try dForce for the reason that it would improve the entire animation look. I have special tricks that I use to try and troubleshoot my way into getting dForce to work on many things. If that fails and I haven't decided to toss the idea of using a skirt, I'd break out my good friend: Geometry Sculptor (Mesh Grabber if you don't have Premier).
I've tried explaining the whole "Custom Dial" thing in text many times and it never went over well even though it takes me forever and a day to try and type it - it's easy (and fast) to do, but there are a lot of variables and important steps not to skip - making the process wordy to try and type.
So in the end I made Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio to explain it fully.
The basic setup that I made when I came up with the idea (Custom Correction Dials) is made for Genesis 1 and is available free HERE
They only work for Genesis 1, but by loading in a Genesis 1 figure after installing these, you'll see what I mean. They completely Fix animation issues in Studio to the point of making animation Fun! Addictive even!
In the course, I show a whole lot of examples on how useful these dials are - with a full video just showing all of the dials I made for Rosie 7 at the time, and in the following video I explain how to make them and show many quick ways to add more and more helper dials as we need or want them.
Currently with my Rosie 8.25 I've been continuing on making more of these dials for her face - facial musculature morphs. I'm not actually making morphs - just making dials that control whatever morphs I use to make a certain 'look' or shape or pose.
Once I've made my dials for "Arms Twist", I can use that dial alone (or the individual ones for each arm) to fix almost all of the arm/hand penetration issues found in Mocap data.
(Sorry, can only get in here to type in spurts today)
Most of the time, in my experience, it's a simply twist of the shoulder bone (Genesis 8 and earlier - Upper arm for Genesis 9) that will fix most such issues, especially when used with the Arms Up/Down and/or Front/Back controls that will correct the problem.
For me, however, it goes much further than that. Often times I need to rotate the head back or forward without affecting the lower neck - or even going the opposite direction for the lower neck. Sometimes I just don't like the posture of the torso or one leg is close to being correct, but just the slightes nudge would fix it entirely.
All of these things can be fixed in a graph editor. However, graph editor corrections require a lot more hands-on and back and forth adjustments for even simple fixes - whereas having a dial that can do many fixes or changes at once is a Massive time saver, and after using them a few times, we end up taking them for granted because we just use them as easily as drinking water on a hot day.
I put that video in the above post - not as a commercial, but because of what it shows on the screen. Because it's a promo, the actual video is sped up, but we can still catch glimpses of the system at work.
Now I'm waiting for a render to finish so I can take some screen shots to show what I'm talking about
Okay, here we go.
In this first image we can see a typical motion capture animation on the timeline. They tend to fill every key slot. My first 30 frames are relatively empty because I never apply my animation data before frame 30 so that I have those frames clear for applying stuff to the character Before the animation actually begins. This is useful for bending the head back to get the hair behind the shoulders, or simply moving the hip back so that the hair already starts a flowing motion before hitting the first rendered frame (30, in my case).
Here we're seeing how few edits I made to completely customize the way the data works on my character - specific posture, arms, head looking forward instead of down - and we can also see that this screen shot was taken before I started working out my facial animations (which will put a bunch of keys into the Head slot on the timeline).
Here we see that there's only one edit done to the arms at the very beginning. Which edit is it? Arms Twist!
Also in this shot, I made sure to make just enough screen room with the timeline to show you all of my Genesis 8 custom Arm dials. The names describe exactly what each dial does. In the Parameters pane, they're also nicely color-coded so that I can quickly distinguish which dials are for Both arms (or legs or....) compared to their individual counterparts. The names are carefully thought out to list them in an order that I like to view them. They're "My" dials, so I can set them up however I like :)
These are just the Arm dials that I've added to my Genesis 8 figures. I have many, many more dials. Like I said before, they're really easy and fast to make, so when I feel the need for a new one, I load in a Genesis 8 Female (or Male, if I'm working with him) Base figure (Dev Load if I want to) and have myself a little dial-making session!
Let me know if this helps and/or if you have any further questions :)
Oh... that course I was talking about above is all about making these dials and ideas on how and why to make other, more special-purpose dials.
I don't know why the aspect ratio of the middle image is all wonky. Just click it to see what it should look like
3D Universe's Pose Architect products use this same custom dial philosophy and are a Lot of fun! They're made to do very specific things and are animated throught the dial's range to make that happen. So for what my custom dials do, Pose Architect doesn't really do the trick. But if you have Pose Architect, try out some of those to make corrections.
V3Digitimes has some amazing pose tools that could very much take the place of creating our own custom dials - I think. I haven't actually tried mine yet for that - I'm just so used to quickly spinning the dials that I've already made that I haven't had the chance to see how well these cool tools work throughout an animation.
I should ask her.
Better yet, I should just take a few hours off one day and try it. But that is not This day - for I am under the gun with a deadline for this month's Creative Cart, which is going to be So Cool!!!
Thank you very much for the explanation.
I like FilaToon very much and I am trying to make my very first animations in Daz Studio.
With iray I lost my interest in animations long time ago (because of the very long time to render).
There are tricks for that too, my friend!
I have changed clips in Animate and now my animation looks better.
By the way - great work on Creative Cart series - I have acquired some of them:
https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--filament-and-filatoon-fundamentals
https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--predatron-content-mastery
https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--epic-environments-and-dragon-dynamics
https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--discovering-ravnhearts-sci-fi-universe
Thank you! :)
May I ask which figure you're using? Is it Genesis 9?
Using Metro Cargo Pants Graffiti textures on Wasteland Shredded AlphaKini
Here's a link to the removed image if you'd like to see it
Well, that didn't work either. It's supposed to take you to the image, but it's down further in the Post Apocalyptic area with the showing of Wasteland Outfit
That is a blast from the past, so I use one of the characters of Victoria 4 all rendered in FilaToon.
Awesome!
A Labor of Love!
It's truly incredible to look back on January 2025 and see how hard I've worked and how much sleep I've lost creating the content that it took to put this massive Creative Cart episode together - all of them, actually!
I'd like to go back and resource all of the materials I've created for each of the episodes and put together additional videos for each episode, as well as to create videos containing the content from all of them - perhaps also an Anniversary Edition video - stuff like that.
This month's promo videos and episode materials were really tough.
Daz Studio updates have made it impossible to render the full animation sequences all the way through. They'd render quickly, but after 200 frames or somewhere thereabouts (different every time) Iray would drop Cuda, which means that it would no longer use the Graphics card!
So I would either stay awake (not always intentionally) to babysit the renders, or I'd wake up after just a few short hours to restart Daz Studio and start the render again.
As if that wasn't enough of a burden, I didn't find out until two or three days before the show that my screen capture software appeared to capture everything that I did on screen, but then the file would show that it is way too short to have actually done so. Sure enough, vital parts of the performance were not recorded! So I ended up using Windows 11's Snippet tool, which actually works very well!
If any of the above sounds like a complaint - I must have said it wrongly.
These were roadblocks that made the creation of the episode very tough - but it didn't take away from the Rush I get from making these things - not in the Slightest!!!
I was overjoyed that I thought to include PD Howler into the show - for that is my Go-To software for editing and creating texture maps. I hope to show more of that process in future episodes as well!
It's -7F where Slater and I live today, with a windchill dropping lower than -30F, so it was the perfect opportunity to begin this adventure with this most recent of the Creative Cart episodes - whose materials are still hot-off-the-press!
Please enjoy this fun video including several snippets from the show, the stitching together of two of the storylines hinted at in the two promo videos (Rosie's endless loop of genre teleportation - this time via The DigiVault's Project Eden), and some animation renders and music that were made specifically for Episode 010, but didn't make it into either the show or the promo videos.
This truly is a Labor of Love, and I have Paul Bussey at Digital Art Live to Thank for All of This!!!
Thank You Paul!!!
AI - Assited Keyframe Animation Enters Daz Studio!
Enter a world where we can sculpt our own animations for Daz Studio as easily as deciding on the next outfit our characters should wear, or which new hair they should have.
The amazing developers at Cascadeur are constantly improving software that was really, Really great for this for quite some time already - but it just keeps getting better!
I'm starting off 2025 with a subscription to the Pro tier plan of Cascadeur to really dig into this amazing endeavor.
Great stuff as always, DART.
Thought you might be interested in this video on using Blender for custom motion capture. I am confident you can find ways to integrate it with all of your other tools.
Well... here's the thing. I'm not actually in Blender at all. I love it, am all for it, think it has an excellent workflow with amazing, complete and growing tools, etc., but my mind, imagination, and muscle-memory are taking me on entirely different paths for no other reason than a preferred way of doing things.
For the most part, I keep my animation work Entirely in Daz Studio. Using those darned custom dials is just the most amazing breakthrough for editing motion capture data onto any compatible figure setup... it's just a real rush to be able to get all of this done so expediously - mostly because of the enjoyment gained from having such a smooth and relaxed (no more hair-pulling difficult-to-solve limb rotation issues - the such that cause bodily pokethrough with itself, etc.,) means that just Begs me to experiment further and make Every motion capture my own by the end... I'm just having the time of my life right now!
The thing that drew me into Cascadeur from the start was their commitment to provide support for Daz Figures. Then seeing their animation reel and a few promo videos... I mean... Hmmm....
So I gave it a try and couldn't believe my mouse clicks - I really couldn't.
Press W to use the (default) translation tool, just touch a foot and move it in some direction - being fluid to try various locations. Jaw falls to the floor as the AI positions the rest of the figure in a way that it decides would work nice for the query it was just sent - making decisions on ballistics, gravity, center of mass, momentum... and we can later define more using dials in the auto-physics phase... It immediately put me into an Amazing Mood to Animate!!!
That's what Cascadeur is - it's like... Daz Studio gives that amazing render. It's great with only what come with Studio and nothing else. But then add all of these amazing assets that we collect through these awe-inspiring years with these folks that develop all of it... I mean....
And then Cascadeur is all about the pose. Period.
If that pose happens through time, we get an animtion out of it.
Using fulcrum points (gravitational contact with the ground) animation tweeners will automatically cause the feet (and character) to stay on the ground or to leave it - and by how much for how long - which we can easily alter by changing the number of frame in the tweener - the interpolation. In other words, if both feet leave the ground, the AI will determine what happens next - which means that the chacter leaves the ground. A jump.
Anyways, it's so amazing trying to get to grips with all of it because it can do so much - so right now I'm just using the AI to assist me in keyframe animation - which is a total Rush!!!
Also gearing up to hop back into Carrara a bit.
From what I understand, Cascadeur can import the custom motions that you film of yourself with your phone and convert with Blender. Just possibly another tool for your toolbox. (I could be wrong about that; there could be another step) Worth taking a look. Here is Cascadeur's compatibility list on its homepage.
Yes! A friend of mine has done that!!! I'm going to be trying that very soon.
We can also bring in any animtion FBX, DAE, and there's another one.
We can "Unbake" animations down to essential key frames to edit or correct, slice... anything we want.
With the Pro tier, we can retarget from anything that has its rig to anything that has its rig - no matter the size or whatever. It's as simple as Retarget Copy from one, Retarget Paste to the other. And another. And another.... whatever. It's really powerful and the physics are cool. We just got Ragdoll!!!
You could totally retarget animations to Brash and Moxy!!! :)
Any animations!
You could even export a Brash and Moxy for Mixamo!!! :)
You'd need Pro for some of that though. Indie is a requirement to export out of Cascadeur, which is fair.
It's not free, nor should it be. The Free version is not time limited and gets the updates. But it lacks Indie and Pro features needed to actually add it to your pipeline. Again... fair.
Being that it's not Time Limited, the free version is the perfect way to discover whether or not you like it. They have a nice selection of characters that come with it, we can import Genesis 8 and 9 (maybe 3? I have to check) without any of the auto-rigging stuff - they're just recognized and work.
Brash could be exported as an FBX and run through the simple auto-rigging rooms on the way into Cascadeur.
Then you have this amazing new way to pose them, mess around with animation tools using physics or not, just have fun trying it out, which is what I did. There was a GiveAway that happens once in a while for the Indie, so I grabbed that and discovered that... yeah... I'm talking to Rosie about this! :)