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My friends and I often disagree over such things.
They often pay attention to critique-type stuff, I just enjoy the art, sound and pacing. I'm in it for Art in Motion
Another great:
Great to see your progress. Stay motivated!
Yes, Luc has a wonderful imagination, and I love how he brings that to the screen.
Always motivated! Just not always able to pay the darned internet bill! LOL
More Bang For Your Buck!!!
Got movies? Check out the special features that might come with them. It's amazing what little tricks we can learn from them - even if they don't get into specific How-Tos.
In fact, I knew that I wanted Alita Battle Angel after I saw how much wealth came with it in extras. I had never heard of Alita or any of that before.
The movie blew me away! The Special Features do too! So I guess I can say that, sometimes I might buy a movie Because of the special features. But it's more that I'm not as worried weather or not I'll like the flick, if it has good documentaries that come with it.
007 - James Bond special features are really something! I had no idea that so much of those movies had to be done in post - and when we look at how long ago Dr. No was made, that work was quite extraordinary! As an animator, I love to keep an eye out for animated movies and TV that might interest me - but I'm not a huge fan of a lot of what's been out there. Like adult comic series... nah... I'll pass on almost (if not all) all of that. The Incredibles on the other hand, um... yes! Big Fan!!!
Disney+ just released a new series of wonderful shorts called Tales of the Jedi - Dave Filoni back to performing excellence on the screen for al ages using amazing art with top-of-the-line animation.
(click image to watch the trailer)
There are some really nice documentaries about Alita Battle Angel, especially if you get the Digital Deluxe. They cover So Much about what they do in order to solve the difficulties of such an incredible undertaking that was the production of Battle Angel. But the only actual tutorial is for making the most delicious chocolate bars - the ones that got Alita to claim Chocolate as being her favorite food. After watching that, I now know why!!! :)
Watching Alita bite into an orange without peeling it (didn't know what it was, so she didn't know she had to) and spitting it back out again with that unmistakable bitter taste loo on her face, and then being overwhelmed by the flavor of an actual orange slice, was such a powerful site to my eyes that I changed my mind about progressing to newer figure lines (I was still using V4 - and there's really nothing wrong with that).
I only bit off a little slice at first, using Genesis 1. Got GenX2 so I could still grab Genesis 2 and 3 females and use them on Genesis. What a blast that was! I did that due to the beautiful work that Daz 3d did on bringing Genesis compatibility to Carrara - my favorite CG movie maker/animation software.
Just messing around converting animation data into aniBlocks in Daz Studio and I decided to just load in one of these more modern Genesis 3 figures that I bought specifically to run through GenX2 for my Genesis character. I wanted to see what they looked like in Studio... in Iray. I was floored by how little effort it took to get such a great render for human skin. Turns out I was just seeing the result of some of the really high-end G3F character products, but they pretty much all are that here at Daz 3d! Fact is, someone who knows how to make beautiful Iray skin had a hand in making this thing look so good. Like all rendering software, surface materials - convincing ones - take knowledge, patience, time, research and a lot of hard work. Daz Studio and the products available for it make this less noticeable, because the experts here make products that we can apply for such reasonable costs that even I can buy some!
Carrara has an exception render engine, in my opinion. It's not new. It hasn't been updated since... I have no idea how long - but Carrara hasn't had an official update/upgrade since, what... 2013ish? Still, the Texture room is an awesome place to build or tweak shaders, with a really nice set of examples that ship right with the main app, The engine has it's own room which is comprised of three rooms of it's own. It offers nearly endless possibilities for setting up the render engine to perform how we want it to. Our computers simply have to be able to process what we tell it to do - for Carrara's Photo-Real engine can be set to bring any computer to its knees.
Not being supported the way Daz Studio and Poser or iClone, it's got a lot less plug n' play options in the content we buy. But the Pro version comes with some impressive skin shaders for the figures it ships with, which can be used as a sort of preset - simply swap out the texture maps and/or make a few personal tweaks.
I'll Always be a big Carrara fan - I just really love it. That being said, Iray blew me away. Then came the free Octane for DS and Valzheimer gives us that awesome Octane Render Kit... along with the fact that Linday produced a thing called Classic Long and Curly Hair with dForce for Genesis 8 Females... Daz Studio suddenly had my head turning towards it simply out of the necessity for that wonderful Hair!!!
Animating in Daz Studio is not like anything else. It's almost like it wants you Not to animate except for the simplest of trial runs - then, if you think you like animating, get a different animation tool.
Carrara was built from the ground up with animation being a strong candidate for what it can be used for - among many other things.
The Sequencer (Carrara's key frame timeline) is So Friendly and easy to use. Everything works just like one might expect it to. In stark contrast, Daz Studio's animation tools aren't lacking, they're just not finished - or something. Key frames are nothing more than stored data. They shouldn't be nearly as cumbersome to work with as they are when one is new to Daz Studio. This is a fact - not mere opinion.
I heard that Daz 3d bought KeyMate and GraphMate from GoFigure and have worked some of them into Studio. I have no clue what this might be because animating was one thing that I knew I wouldn't be using Daz Studio for, so I never bought it. Seeing some mentions of it lead me to believe that they just might 'fix' a lot of Studio's short-comings, but now we can't buy it. That kinda sucks. Actually... it really sucks. Fact.
Still... that darned Hair by Linday! Iray and Octane are awesome, but I also really enjoy rendering in Carrara.
That hair got me to wanting to try and figure something out. Discover some way to animate in Studio - at least for my Character with that Hair!
So that's why you see that Rosie is always in an Alpha render. I can fit a little more into the scene before Iray kicks my GPU out entirely, but not much.
Continued
I started making my own tools within Studio onto my figures to help me solve some of the problems I have with animating in the app.
Suddenly, to my surprise, I'm actually getting quite proficient with my character animations.
That's the real magic of Studio - it has tools for making tools - and there are so many of them and they're all, each so good at doing what they do, that we can pretty much make tools using imagination while the development engineers at Daz 3d magically perform the tough parts under the hood using tested and true algorithms or whatever... just awesome. Good job folks!
Many of my tools get built right into the figure, and I control them with parameter dials - like a morph. Others might load onto the character using the wonderful "Wearables" system. Sometimes it might be saving the parts of a shader that I want to be able to add to another existing shader with a click, rather that making all of those adjustments each time... but this is only scratching the surface. I'm still a total noob at Studio.
Still, for making my digital movies Carrara is So Much more flexible. In order to animate textures in Studio, I had to buy a plugin - and I see that there are more such products out there. Even with these add-ons, we're not even close to competing with how we can simple animate any aspect of textures in Carrara - even loading avi or image sequences as texture maps.
Nearly everything in Carrara has user-facing controls meant to make animation needs as simple as changing a value.
Damn that Hair!!! ;)
Fact: I would Love to see those brilliant devs at Daz 3d to pour some of that Love into Carrara!
I know... wishful thinking, right?
Ever the Daz 3d optimist = me!
I heard something about a new version of Hexagon coming our way. That's intriguing! Truly! I like Hex!
Who knows, maybe there's a secret Carrara society going on in some corner of Daz 3d Dev hHeadquarters?
Collecting and Resourcing
Like any filmmaking project, the Producer has to collect assets needed to complete every shot.
I became a Platinum Club member almost as soon as I became a Daz 3d member. I knew that I would be needing all manner of items that weren't even on my lists of current needs - these things just pop up.This is not a big deal if you have a decent budget - just hop into your account when you need something and grab it. The store is so full now compared to how it was when I first started perusing its halls. But I often don't have much (if any) funding available to just grab stuff, so I needed to start building up a library of pretty much anything I could get my hands on. Daz + is Perfect for that!
I've been collecting since 2010 - and most of the time not spending a whole lot of money. It's amazing how many assets we can acquire for not much more than our Daz + membership alone!
Well now my story is coming together and I'm needing to pick out assets for the upcoming scenes. Here's something fun I've been doing to spark my memory of what I have:
Product Library
Yeah, it's not a secret that, if we want to know what we have we can check our Product Library here and have a look. Different ways to sort them and there's a handy Search bar as well. I also like how they now show the product images on the page, if we don't disable that feature. Really handy for me.
What it doesn't have are the category filters that the Store has. Maybe in the future.
Store Filters
What did I just say? Oh... Right. The Product Library doesn't have the filters for finding assets like those in the store proper.
This brings up a fun way for me to write my scene resources - just shopping the store as if I had to buy my way in.
To do this, I use the navigation tools at the top of the store to get my category, like People > Clothing, Places and Things, etc., and then use the filters on the left edge to further narrow it down, if needed (I do this when I'm wanting to see Creatures for a specific figure, like Genesis 8 Male, for example) and then next to "Hide Owned" I instead select "Show Only Owned" and I get a listing of store items I can buy for free because I already have them.
I'm not there yet, but for my snowy scenes I have this wonderful looking set of tools called DA Let it Snow, which has shells for covering stuff with snow (including people, etc.,) as well as snowflakes which can be animated. I wasn't really feeling a need for something like this, which is why I'm really glad that I ran across it just now! I remember being all excited when I looked at it during the sale. But during some of these sales we can get pages and pages (Product Library pages) of assets - and when we're busy animating stuff completely unrelated to this cool new thing, it can easily become temporarily overlooked.
Try It Out
Seriously! I just designed a Demon from another Plane using a spattering of various elements I have in my library for a figure that I can animate efficiently. I've also outlined my initial thoughts for dressing out everyone I need for my upcoming scenes. I know my character/clothing assets pretty well anyway, but this really helps to speed up the process - especially since I'm waiting just a few more minutes for my simulation to finish, file to save, or animation rendering to complete!
Cheers Friends! ;)
Oh... I gotta go. One of RawArt's Lesser Goblins just punched Rosie 7 in the face, and she turned around and kicked his ass. Better go make sure everythings still okay for the next shoot! Argh!!!
It's a fun thing. I like to look back through these things because I often wrote notes about the excitement I had for getting these things, and it's a great refresher of cool stuff that resides in my library at Daz 3d - like I was mentioning above.
It really is amazing at how well these little articles have got my mind into kit bashing these things together, when I need to create something special.
Here is the current list. I hope to eventually make more pages going back in time to the very beginning of joining Daz 3d along the way as I write new ones. I already have a decent number of pages in my library since my last article - so I really need to get after it!
Landing Page
Thanks Daz 3d!!!
Pictoral Articles
Thanks Daz 3D!!! Compiled February 2021
Thanks Daz 3D!!! Compiled May 2021
Thanks Daz 3D!!! June 2021 Semi-Annual PC+ Sale
Thanks Daz 3D!!! October 2021 PC+ Anniversary Sale
October 2021 PC+ Anniversary Sale page 2
Go ahead. Dig around and have some fun! :)
A Word About Carrara 8.5 Pro
It's not hard to find my words of enthusiasm about Carrara or Daz 3d. It's hard, right now for me not to just start talking about all of the things I love about it. But I had a point, and I want to stick with it.
Diomede has been putting up some wonderful tutorial info regarding Marvellous Designer and dForce, which brings me to writing this post.
I, too, have been playing around with dForce a Lot lately. One huge finding for me is that dForce opens up a whole new realm of costume design, because with its magic, I can use pretty much any clothing with any figure.
Hexagon has a handy bridge to and from Daz Studio, which is a real treat. Carrara truly is nearly that simple with its export OBJ options to include Daz Studio scaling options - and then Studio has Carrara inport/export options. Both allow us to bring the figure in question into the workspace without any special voodoo, which is handy. But it is Carrara that allows us to also use morphs and rigging, even if we're not going to animate and render within.
In Carrara I can load in my target figure, say Genesis, and then morph it around and still model to fit it.
Anyway, Carrara 8.5 Pro is a friendly environment for so many things. Setting up cloth mesh for great use in dForce is no exception.
If you don't already have Carrara 8.5 Pro, it's almost always so inexpensive these days that it's far more worth its weight simply through the wealth of great legacy content that comes with it!
Here's a fun little pictoral article on What Comes with Carrara 8.5 Pro?
These legacy Genesis items are still an invaluable part of my asset inventory. Carrara also includes Carrara surface shaders for M5 and V5 to get you started rendering them in Carrara.
On the fence about Carrara but have always wondered about it?
Dartanbeck.com has a lot of information that might help you decide:
Carrara Zone - a short landing page and container for the Carrara Zone with some pertinent links
Carrara Info - contains links to actual Carrara Discussion Forum threads started with that topic
And then there's another section geared more toward my endeavors to create CG films:
Carrara CG Workshop - a landing page and container for the articles within, which also explains the layout a bit
Story - we have to start somewhere, right?
Pacing and Rendering - a short article based on observations and needs
Pre-Production Phase - What do we need to do to get ready?
Production Phase - a landing page and container for the subject with links
Post Production Phase is currently empty because I'm not there yet ;)
Did you know?
Carrara has 3D Paint built right in?
see more of Cripeman's awesome tutorials using my Index!
I am absolutely addicted to rendering in Iray right now - it's so lovely!
Shortly after I started my journey into learning Daz Studio Valzheimer released her awesome OctaneRender Toolkit, so I started using that and I loved it! That is... all the way up until I lost my internet and couldn't connect to Otoy servers any more :(
This led me to start getting to know Iray which, I must say has been an absolute Joy!
Now that I have stable internet, I may just have to hop back into OctaneRender and play with that some more. It's a load of fun!
Oh crap... I don't remember what I'm doing in OctaneRender!
Dartanbeck to the Rescue!!!
Free OctaneRender for Daz Studio
Valzheimer did an amazing job with this kit!
She includes presets that convert current Iray materials into OctaneRender shaders according to which surface type we choose. The lights and environment settings are really nice too.
One of my favorite parts, however, is the four-part video set that she includes. She really makes it simple - and switching render engines usually is anything but.
See my short article
I'm having a lot of fun animating interactions between characters.
I'm discovering that, if I'm careful I can get another figure into the same scene as Rosie without kicking my GPU out of Iray.
Currently she's in session fighting off Predatron's impressive Giant Fantasy Snake!!!
You are putting that 2060 to good use.
That AgitatedRiot RTX 2060 IS good use!!! ;)
Thanks Again!
And Again... and Again... and Again....
This type of iconic fantasy art is what led to my absolute love for fantasy and fantasy art. And I'm just going to say I'm impressed. I will be revisiting when I have time to sit down and wath everythign in one sitting. Most excellent!
Thanks! Me too!
This is a really cool 'Behind The Scenes' look at making that great Frazetta classic: Fire & Ice:
Amazing how they made this back in 1983!
Here is a review of some Frazetta bio and art that you might enjoy.
quote 'Mama Mia, we have a genius on our hands!'
Frank Frazetta Fantasy Painting by ComicBookGirl,
https://youtu.be/MAppGWhig_E
Saw that. Yes, she gives a rather spirited review! :)
I just grabbed Alvin Bemar's ABas: Animated Shaders System for Daz Studio!
I'll likely still be using Carrara for a lot of my animated texture scenes, but this will make my Daz Studio work so much more flexible.
For example:
I'm doing a lot of work that simply has to be done in Daz Studio. I'm mostly referring to my scenes of Rosie, but there are plenty of others.
For these scenes, in order to make flashing lights, I need to add that in post. If I want Rosie to go from dry to wet, I have to make several renders of the same sequence at various levels of wetness, and blend them artistically in post. Etc., etc.,
While 'Adding things in Post' is actually quite fun, if the action of the scene is moving around a lot, it becomes increasingly more difficult to get a 'believeable' result.
This thing lets us change all kinds of stuff, including tiling, opacity, colors, metalic... pretty much anything I'd need to change!
presentation video:
Rosie got me a nice Black Friday gift - The Gift of Daz 3d!
ABAS: Animated Shaders System, Off-Road Sci-Fi Car, and TALON Dark Space Walls - all of which will be put to use this weekend!
I've talked about the Animated Shaders System above.
This cool car! I've been collecting various cars, not long ago, looking for a way to kit bash something like this together. I have something fairly cool in the works, incorporating a motorcycle and a car together, but it's not quite cool enough for what I need to do.
Then this thing hits the store - and as a Daz Originals/Daz + item as well! Thanks Mely3D!!!
I absolutely Love Linday's Animation Four Wheeler Template system, which will bring this new car to life! I'm really suprized that the promo images don't really show off the cool wheels that come with the template. With this system, literally anything can become a four wheeler with really nice wheels!
The first thing I had to try, however, was to see how easily Rosie could get in and out of this car. With the cool dials for the steeering controllers and seatbelt, Rosie got in comfy and ready to rip the streets!!! Hair is just about done simulating!
TALON Dark Space Walls looks like another wish come true for me. I have a lot of corridors and doors, blast doors and consoles, etc., but there never seems to be enough of them. These not only fill two entirely new looks for such things, but it's incredibly modular. Try to render as much as I can in Iray without going over my 6GB VRAMM capacity. Modular kits help a lot with this - providing that extra bit that I need the characters to interact with without taxing the system too heavily.
Happy Holiday Weekend, All!!! I hope your's is filled with good cheer and plenty of Daz 3d! Stay Safe, my Friends!
The main promo thumbnail for TALON Dark Space Walls is clever, but it can also (accidentally) cause a person (like it did to me) to glance right on past in in the store: "I don't need striped Sci-Fi walls"
Just to clear that up, they're not stiped. It comes in two completely different color schemes - dark Imperial gray and a desert sand color for the Rebellion.
The actual promo images on the product page clear it up much better. They show many angles and arrangements in both schemes, and then a full section at the end using the striping, showing how vastly every component changes between them. For instance, the wall lights are entirely different in shape and color. I'm betting that it's a clever Normal map displacement thing that makes it work so well.
Definitely looking forward to exploring the halls of the preset, and then digging in to make my own vignettes! :)
Here's a mock-up scene with a frame from the animation.
Using my Animation Helper tools that I've made for Genesis 3 Female (more sophisticated set than the free set for Genesis on my web site) I was able to animate the entire set of motions from sitting down to getting into driving position, along with all of the intermediate motions from GoFigure's Chair Sit Idle animation from their Transition Ups and Down pack.
First I had her sit down into the drivers seat. For this the actual Chair Sit aniBlock worked perfectly out of the box (after I converted it to G3F, that is) but I still worked in some changes due to her guns, computers and gadgets. I like having her 'feel' their presence when her hands pass them by.
Transitioning that aniBlock with the Chair Sit Idle block worked perfectly for initiating the rest. I increased the blending of the aniBlocks to get the feet working the way I wanted them to be at the start of that second block. At that point I zero my Animation Helper Tools to hold that position. I also have the 0.00 key frame for the whole toolset set to Linear interpolation, so a value of "0" will remain "0" between 0.00 in time and this new holding set of key frames.
The way the foot rests and Hand Control Arms work on this car, the rest was really simple. Without messing with any of the leg or arm rotations from the aniBlock, I used my Animation Helpers to animate the final driving position that we see here, and then went back and refined how she would lift her legs into that position, and how she'd manipulate the control arms. I thought that I might have to delete piles of keys and pose the limbs by hand, but when we can do it with these controls, we get a much more organic animation because the original motion capture data is still playing on those joints. We're just tweaking the full pose - which is why I made these tools in the first place.
That little demo was done with a test render of a single frame of the animation done on the car exactly as it comes in from the library, with the one exception that the seatbelt bar is turned invisible.
This is not the final look of the car, and the scene was only rendered to 40% completion.