Hi

I've been playing around with Daz Studio 4 and ran into a real road block.

After looking for a way to export the animation I did as a video I gave up and asked on their forum.

I was told that you have to export all the frames individually and assemble them in a video program.

I guess that means lip syncing and stuff like that next to impossible.

It appears that if you are into animation this isn't really as usable a program as Poser.  I don't want thing to be harded to do, I was hoping it would be more versatile in that respect then Poser.

That seems like kind of a mistake to me.  It would seem like common sense that a animation program would output video.

Of course Im pretty new to this stuff maybe that isn't unusual but I'd rather output something I can preview and check without have to jump through hoops.

Mike

Chances are that feature may exist in DAZStudio 4 Advance.

As I understand, many people use the individual file option with Poser.
That way things like alpha can be preserved when you are compositing the video.
I'm sure someone who does more animation than I do will be visiting this thread.

Besides, I just tested by outputing .avi animation in DS4 and it seems to work fine in that mode.

With DS, it does rendering first, then ask you for format of .avi at end.

exporting the animation as single frames in Poser has some advantages , mainly in restarting a failed render.  It will not affect lip sync if you work to the timeline since you can drop in the sound and sync it in the video editor. 

But this is easilt taken care of by program you use for editing final video.

I am not big fan of any DS, but version 4 appears to function in video as previous versions.

I attach screen shot of render settings for making the movie

Where is the option to output AVI in DS4?

That's what I was looking for when I was told you have to output files.

The thing is I tend to output my video and play it back then go back to Poser and make adjustments a lot.  Changing movement speed etc.

Having to output the files and then assemble them in a video editing program seems like a lot of extra work.

I usually export the speech along with the video but I have added it later a few times.

Since I usually have to export my video in sections, (sometimes I have had as much as 4,500 frames in one clip) because Poser will only do so much at one time without freezing up. My experience has been 750 frames is safe.

I don't know if it would be a problem doing frames all at once or not but it seems like a lot of extra work.

I don't render my videos, it would just take too long and probably never finish.

I export the video bigger then I'm going to use it and it looks good when it is reduced.  The nice thing about using images or AVI files in the background is they don't need to be rendered to be sharp.

I just incorporate the way that the figure looks as part of the style.

I'm no going for photo realism.

Mike

Ok I think the problem I was having finding the option is because I was looking for it before rendering.

I'll check it out.

I have to say though that Poser seems a lot easier to use to me.  I suppose that I would get used to the interface eventually but it still seems like it's a lot of steps to get to anything.  When I was trying to put on clothes I had to click about 4 locations before I could get it to apply.  I'm probably just doing it wrong.

On the other hand I did notice that DS4 renders much faster then Poser.

Maybe it would render fast enough to make rendering an animation practical.

I did a scene with the dragon and the big hall thing with the platform and all the pillars and it rendered in just a few seconds.

Mike

You might find the answers in the DAZ Studio forums here as well.

Something like Tmpgenc (?) will load up a sequence without much effort. You just specify the starting file and that its a sequence of files.  see videohelp.com for tools.

Hi

I'm posting on the Daz forums too!

And I think that I'm making a little progress.

You do have to render it to create a video and the AVI file is created when you render it by selecting Movie when you render as apposed to single frame.

As soon as I get a chance I will create another short video and then render it.

I messed around with the walk process and that is actually quite easy to do.

You just drag in a cycle for forward, right, left, Stop and Go.

The next Poser should incorporate a system with poses for Make a Right Turn, Make a Left Turn, Start and Stop.  I have already decided that I'm going to try and do that Myself.

If you make a pose for one cycle forward that blends into one for Right Turn etc. then you could make your character walk around just by loading each pose in order the same way it works in D4.

The advantage is that in D4 the character moves in the correct direction and at the right speed automatically.  No walk path or anything like that.

I don't know how I would to that it Poser.  You would still have to move the character using the Body Parameter Dials and getting the speed correct would be the usual problem.  If anyone has any idea about this I'd be glad to hear it.

I'm still a newb at this animation stuff in Poser as well.

I do like the Genesis Figure if I could load it in Poser I would buy the morphs for it.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

KimberlyC has moved this thread from the Poser forum to the DAZ|Studio forum as of Tuesday, July 26, 2011 12:04 am.

There are a number of features in DAZ Studio 4 that don't work as well as they should, or even work at all at this point (COLLADA export, for example). Pretty much everyone is waiting on DAZ Studio 4 Advanced (or Pro -- whatever they decide to call it). DS4 is free until the end of July, and hopefully that means that DS4A will arrive shortly afterwards. I would imagine then that the issue with the animation tools will be resolved. 

Hi

Just back to say that I did have success in creating and exporting a video from DS4.

It wasn't that hard once I knew how, but it's hard to go to an interface that is so different then anything I normally use.

I have about everything that Adobe makes plus Poser and a number of other graphics programs.  After a while I just can't absorb another system of doing every thing.

Mike