The Power of aniMate 2 Promo A

[@DivaAi]

I thought you were using an AI voice at first because your voice is so cool! I hope you do voice work because your voice is great. Your "The Power of AniMate 2" tutorial looks interesting and very helpful for those looking to start animating in Daz Studio. Daz Studio is such a powerful tool and highly underrated!

[@Dartanbeck]

I agree that it's Vastly underrated, which is why I'm stirring the pot. It's not only a Lot of Fun, but I think it looks pretty cool too - and without a home video maker having to spend all of the time and All of the Money to jump headlong into the Pro Level software that gurus are trying to get everyone to use. Even iClone is Really expensive. Either use their content ($$$) or buy the pipeline that allows for use in Studio ($$$)... forget that! Studio has some tricks, and I'm showing folks how to use them!!! :) The voice... Well, when I was young I was a professional Monster - Zekiel Raven, Lord of the Dark and a Rock Drummer who loves to sing and play. I'm not a Monster actor anymore, but I'll never quit drumming and singing!!! :) I've also always loved imitating people and things.

[@24vencedores11]

Animating in DAZ studio? No way!

[@Dartanbeck]

@@24vencedores11 Just had to discover a workflow... This is freaking Fun!!!

[@TheYunababy77]

I am watching the video for your new course. Is these the aniblocks you are using? aniMate Runway Construction Kit

[@Dartanbeck]

In the demo on the store page? Yes. Yes it is Runway Construction Kit by GoFigure :)

[@TheYunababy77]

@@Dartanbeck Thank you!! Glad I saved my Christmas money. I grabbed everything. lol

[@Dartanbeck]

@@TheYunababy77 I just finished my collection of legacy motion capture aniBlocks from Reisormocap just last week! :) I thought I already had them all, because I have updated versions of these. But these older Investigation Moves and Salutes had motions that I didn't have in those newer packs - and the extra motions are Most Welcome! I love my Bone Minions!!! :)

[@TheYunababy77]

@@Dartanbeck I love Bone Minion as well for my G2 poses also I purchased VWD Cloth and hair. Still working on using it.

[@HarryClipz]

Daz needs to upgrade their software, it is ages old and obsolete. Now iclone with Daz characters is a beast then exporting them into Blender or UE5 is the icing on the cake

[@Dartanbeck]

Perhaps. But the new update a few days ago sure makes me happy with the new timeline!!! Oh Man I'm having fun!!!

[@spacekitt.n]

daz needs to update a lot of stuff in their software but unfortunately they only care about the shop lmao. so many 3rd party paid plugins should be built into the software its ridiculous. on the verge of being crippleware

[@Dartanbeck]

@@spacekitt.n I disagree. The software (Daz Studio) is an amazing piece of software and the ability to garner so many cool plugins for such reasonable costs is a great way to expand it into the direction we personally need it to go. - It helps us that the plugins are made available - It helps plugin creators generate some income for their work - Daz Studio is already free and being actively developed Their content is their money-maker and, even that is nearly always sold at Much better prices than other venues and the quality is pretty high level - high enough for me, that's for sure.

[@spacekitt.n]

@@Dartanbeck i dont disagree that its amazing. there are things that daz does that are excellent and theyre the reason i use it as my main 3d software right now. but there are just things in the software that are either lacking, have strange defaults or just feel neglected. many things are just unnecessarily counterintuitive as well. you can really FEEL that they put their energy into the content and not the software, which is sad because one benefits the other. and it doesnt really matter if its free if the real useful stuff is something you have to purchase. like i had to get a plugin just to get the model to look at the camera(including bending and twisting toward the camera). this should be an inbuilt feature imo as well as many other things. its frustrating but not frustrating enough to get me to use another program lmao

[@Loony_BeLuna]

Wait, the timeline got updated? I still use 4.20 if I'm right. I can still not use Gen9, because I hate updating.

[@Dartanbeck]

Well, some folks might not consider it Huge, but the key frames are much easier to work with - bigger and easier to select, we can grab a group of collapsed keys and drag them along the timeline, and some house cleaning organization... stuff like that - which is HUGE for me! I love the easier to use keys! I love being able to leave them collapsed (not drilling down into the hierarchy) to drag them around! I still can't use Genesis 9 either. Too intense for my machine? I don't know. My machine is no slouch. But when I'm working with it for animations, it consistently crashes Studio outright. Nice looking figure though!

[@Loony_BeLuna]

@@Dartanbeck I don't want to use Genesis 9 because the new surface system. And I always hated the key frames in the old animation system, that's why I didn't like to animate. But it's good to hear that they improved it!

[@Dartanbeck]

@@Loony_BeLuna I was in SHOCK!!! I saw the update shortly after the recent update to 4.22 in DIM so, like always, I jusr ran the update. It utterly floored me! I had no idea. I don't really follow the release notes or anything - these changes were so apparent to me that I almost fell out of my chair! I immediately wroter Daz 3D and asked them to thank the development team for me! I am helping a friend over TeamView get into Daz Studio, and he's using Genesis 9. I must say... I wish I was using it. Beautiful thing! The way it comes in its Free form is truly astounding! I've been collecting some stuff for it and trying to play around, but then DS suddenly vanishes. Boom. That doesn't bother me though. I have a lot into my Genesis 8 and am really enjoying using that generation. I use all generations from V4 and M4 and the Predatron LoRez figures through Genesis 8. They all work well for me. Genesis 8.1 is like Genesis 9 for me. I can make a nice character, but then DS blinks out. Gone. One day I'll be able to upgrade my PC - but that's not today. In the meantime - I'm having a whole lotta Fun!!!

[@Loony_BeLuna]

@@Dartanbeck Hi, I don't like to upgrade the software, that's why I wait long. It's also not very recommended to jump instantly on the newest version, they released sometimes versions with bugs. Like my version can't load saved themes correctly. In 4.16 it worked. I don't like in Gen9 that you can't use the G8 skins and I got the feedback that the surface in general makes problems to adjust. About PC power: it's important to have 32 or better 64gb ram. Starting a render takes around 25gb+ and windows needs already a lot GB! So I highly recommend get 64gb. Without that it will crash often!

[@Dartanbeck]

@@Loony_BeLuna Yeah, I know. But I used to hang out online with the developers when they were actively working on Carrara, so I'm always excited for the next version. I don't recommend anyone following me in that, but I always update right away. I have 64GB RAM, but rendering for me doesn't take nearly that much. I'm going to be doing a course on how to render animations without having to wait forever. Mine are all done relatively quickly.

[@dragongaiden1992]

Friend, what PC is required for animation like the one you did? I would also like to add effects, environments and maybe more models.

[@Dartanbeck]

I have a link at the bottom of this reply. I'm using a Ryzen 7, 2nd Gen 64GB RAM RTX 2060 I render my characters separately from everything, backgrounds separate, FX and additional animations separately. It works Much faster. Some of those Extra Elements will render many frames within a second. bugs.daz3d.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003568443-What-are-the-System-Requirements-to-run-Daz-Studio-

[@dragongaiden1992]

@@Dartanbeck Oh look, grace, I'll take it into account, but how long did it take you to do it? Well, I tried to put a prop, a model with effects, an environment and lighting with primitives and if I feel that it is a little slow to render in 1080p, I have a 2nd generation Ryzen 5 with 16 RAM. and a 3060 with 12 GB, I guess I have to upgrade my hardware more.

[@Dartanbeck]

@@dragongaiden1992 When I render only that character alone, I get about one frame per minute at 720p. Closer to the camera takes considerably longer. For Iray, your main asset will be a fast nVidia GPU with enough video RAM to fit the whole scene, or Iray will only use your CPU and ignore the GPU altogether. I have a 6GB RTX 2060, so I keep my scenes minimal. Also, sometimes the GPU doesn't kick in if you've had DS running for a long time. Save, restart Daz Studio and render. It can really help to reduce texture map sizes for things that don't need large maps. Seriously. Some tiny background props can have a 4K map on it! Argh! So a lot of the little trinkets I have on the Cyberpunk Rosie, like her communicators, wifi server, etc., have had their texture maps reduced. I use irfanview's batch processor to do entire folders of textures at a time. I also use HDRI Photo Shoot by joelegecko at Daz 3D for lighting my characters without needing to add extra lights. That helped speed things up too.

[@dragongaiden1992]

@@Dartanbeck thank you very much for the information friend

[@Dartanbeck]

@@dragongaiden1992 My pleasure! Have fun, my friend!

[@zcnaipowered7407]

Powerful plugin.

[@Dartanbeck]

Indeed!

[@zcnaipowered7407]

Can it be used at the same time as daz mimic pro?

[@Dartanbeck]

It certainly can. They're both from around the same era and were used together as common practice. It also gives us the ability to store the animation results from Mimic as an aniBlock, which adds a whole new realm of flexibility

[@zcnaipowered7407]

@@Dartanbeck Cool I look forward to adding it to my collection of plugins end of this year.

[@Dartanbeck]

@@zcnaipowered7407 Just so you know, Daz Studio does come with a free version already. Buying the full version adds a lot of animation power though - things that the free version just doesn't have. I have a pretty cool info thread at my site: www.dartanbeck.com/daz-zone/daz-studio/the-power-of-animate-2

[@predi888]

Animate 2 is a crap, they still haven't fixed generation 8, even more, they still haven't fixed the ability to create animations from scratch

[@Dartanbeck]

LOL! That's who I'm using - Genesis 8 That tiny part of it that doesn't work on anything newer than Genesis 2 is such a minor thing! :) Being able to (so quickly) go back and forth between it and the timeline makes up for both of those complaints in a fast hurry. aniMate 2 freaking ROCKS!!! But then again, we each have our ways and I respect yours fully. For me, aniMate 2 is what really makes animation in Daz Studio powerful, fast, and fun. Being able to send my timeline work into an aniBlock so I can use the many functions of aniMate 2, and send it back to the timeline... Oh Man! The only part of it that isn't working for Genesis 3-9 are the exclusions for sub tracks. Not a deal breaker. I load the aniBlock by itself (or with others... whatever) and send it into the DS Timeline, select the parts I want to use as a sub track, copy keys. Clear Animation > Figure Pose, Paste key frames. Head back into aniMate, Create new aniBlock. Now I have a partial aniBlock. I save those in a "Partials" folder for future use. Delete it from the track. Add my base animation, add a sub track, load my partial. Bam! Rocks!

[@predi888]

@@Dartanbeck @Dartanbeck I know that, but it just creates too many complications. For example - I'm creating an animation on Animate Block, it looks good, but when I start editing it with pins, everything falls apart. All animation is ruined. In addition, there is this curse of "sliding feet", it seems like it's not a big deal, but it hurts me like hell (the character looks like he's sliding on the ground). Of course, there are ways to correct this, but it takes extra time. There is also the option of lifting something by the character, but I managed to "somehow" deal with it by replacing the object

[@Dartanbeck]

@@predi888 Sorry to hear of this. I don't have sliding foot issues with Genesis 8. What sort of aniBlocks are you using? I've never really been a fan of working with "pins" in my animations. Are you referring to the aniMate tool in Daz Studio? I use a different method that I outline in detail in my Dynamic Character Animation for Daz Studio kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZzQiqGbaKt6mbs kzbin.info/www/bejne/fXTIiYyHbZ5ra5Y

[@predi888]

@@Dartanbeck Pins are cool (theoretically), sometimes they work and sometimes they ruin the entire animation (more often they don't work). When you select the "transalete" tool and click on any part of the body (leg, head, hand, whatever), there is a small curved gray pin next to the tool. When you press it, it turns purple and changes position and you can lock a part of your body in place while other parts of your body can move. when it comes to "sliding", it's also in your videos, I've watched it so much that I see it all the time.

[@Dartanbeck]

@@predi888 Have you tried the aniMate pins? They're in the aniMate Tool - Tool settings.