Daz Studio : Getting Started with Animation

Authors:

Take the next step in telling your story

If you are a storyteller and love creating visual narratives, a natural step is to explore animation with DAZ Studio. But where do you start?

By utilising aniMate2 (by GoFigure 3D), a tool already incorporated in DAZ Studio, Ivy Summers introduces you to the world of animation, teaching you about the animation timeline and native puppeteer function. She'll go onto talk about other essential tools and methods to enable you to begin your journey and expand your skills and knowledge.

Get started quickly with these tutorials, where Ivy will help you create your first animation with 30 to 60 keyframes in length.

This tutorial product includes:-

1) 3.5 hours of tutorial recordings.

2) A pre-saved user interface layout to get you up and running for your DAZ Studio animation workspace.

3) A floor prop to get you started with animating a walking character.

Learn how to set up the animation work environment

a. Setting up Daz Studio User-interface to speed up your workflow.
b. Get organised! Setting up a basic file management, for your animation project.
c. Storyboards and project scripts
d. Animation assets? What are they?
e. Beginning and saving your animated project.

Master animation timelines

a. Learn about the built in Daz Studio Native Timeline.
1. What are keyframes?
2. Touch on the basics of using the puppeteer for setting up animated poses.

b. Introduction to the AniMate2 plugin. Learn the basics of the AniMate2 Plugin by
GoFigure. Demonstrate the power of using AniMate2 timelines.

c. Introduction to aniblocks & MOCAPS ( preset motions files) to use with the
AniMate2 timeline. A simple demonstration on how using preset motions
files and why would you use them.
d. More about Keyframes & Editing them with the license version of animate2
e. Saving your Animation as a Animate Preset to share for other projects or to
share with other artist..

Learn Basic Lighting Skills for Speed Rendering.

a. Setting up a scene using AOA lights for quick 3Delight Rendering.
b. Rendering Animation with Iray. Recommended Iray render settings to speed up render times.
c. Essential shadow and display setting cheats to speed up your renders.
C. How to use Spot & Emissive Lights with the AniMate2 Keyframes for simple light-effects…

Rendering your animation

a. Introduction & Demonstration into Render settings & file Options used for a Daz Studio animation.
b. The Daz Studio render settings for 3delight.
c. The Daz Studio Render settings for Iray

Saving and Showcasing your Animation

a. File options to save your finished animation for film editing
b. Options for showcasing on social media.

About the Presenter : Ivy Summers

Ivy Summers from Northeast Tennessee has always had music and art as part of her life!

She has been an Adobe Creative Suite Ambassador endorsing and working with Adobe creative suite products throughout most of her art career. In 2010, she was then introduced to Daz Studio and soon discovered the joy of creating short story animations, realising the accessibility to an unlimited amount of quality 3d models, that could be rendered on a home computer.

Since then Ivy has created a series of her own cartoon animations including the “Karate Girl” Adventures. She’s been commissioned to promote country musician Gus Gregory’s children Christmas songs with animation and commissioned for book cover illustrations by Christian author Buddy Vadien.

Today the demand for Ivy’s ability to create commissioned artwork, for print, websites design, business logos, brochures, t-shirt prints, book covers, animation has grown! Throughout her husband has encouraged her creative journey.

You can find more example of Ivy’s work on her website.

Ivy is an active member of the DAZ forums, sharing her art and advice since 2010, especially on this long running thread.

To top it all – Ivy is very energetic and loves all animals, especially the small fuzzy ones!

What's Included and Features

Daz Studio : Getting Started with Animation:
Session 1 : Animation Work Environment and Animation Timelines:
- Duration: 1 hour and 41 minutes
- 00:02 - Intro
- 00:03 - Set up DAZ Studio layout
- 00:08 - Folder set up. File management
- 00:12 - Floor prop load
- 00:18 - About keyframes
- 00:20 - Picking poses and animating between poses
- 00:25 - Rendering preview of keyframes
- 00:27 - Scripts
- 00:33 - Question on 3Delight and Iray - setting up the environment
- 00:36 - Setting up a character with texture for animation.
- 00:38 - Adding a prop
- 20:43 - Parenting a prop with a character’s hand.
- 20:45 - Throwing a ball
- 00:52 - Using aniblocks
- 00:59 - Graph editor
- 01:06 - Saving an animation file
- 01:11 - Different versions of DS and why
- 01:15 - Subtracks
- 01:18 - Baking
- 01:25 - Adobe Premiere example
- 01:35 - Homework
- 01:41 - Subset scenes
Session 2 : Lighting Skills for Speed Rendering, Rendering Settings, Saving and Showcasing:
- Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes
- 00:00 - Recap
- 00:05 - Creating lights
- 00:07 - Distant lights and diffusing them
- 00:10 - Sunlight
- 00:15 - Render a few frames
- 00:20 - Display settings and shadows
- 00:25 - Joint editor - to help with characters and props
- 00:26 - 3Delight - render settings and global presets
- 00:29 - Lighting advantages with 3Delight over Iray
- 00:30 - Polycounts and rendering with 3Delight
- 00:34 - Switching to Iray from 3Delight
- 00:40 - Progressive rendering
- 00:43 - Firefly problem in Iray in lower lighting levels.
- 00:45 - About Codex
- 00:50 - Exporting PNG
- 00:55 - About licensing and copyrighting
- 01:00 - HDR Environments
- 01:05 - Environment settings and floors
- 01:10 - 3Delight rendering
- 01:15 - Shadows and 3Delight
- 01:20 - Saving and Export settings for video
- 01:22 - Puppeteer
- 01:25 - Motion blur in 3Delight
Q & A Video Segment:
- Duration : 16 minutes
- 00:01 - Review of attendee’s homework - walk cycle.
- 00:02 - Aniblocks definition
- 00:03 - A word on motion capture
- 00:04 - Getting a hold of older DAZ Studio installs in both 32 and 64 bit to facilitate
- 00:06 - Demo how to import BVH and use with Genesis 2/3 ?
- 00:07 - BVH and baking an aniblock
- 00:14 - Hotkeys for animating
Floor Pane Prop (.DUF)
Animation Layout (.DSX)
Readme- Instructions for Animation Layout