Dartanbeck opened this issue on Nov 25, 2023 ยท 27 posts
Dartanbeck posted Sat, 25 November 2023 at 5:24 PM
Translating Animation Data into New aniBlocks for Different Generations
I am looking for an aniBlock, but... oh... that's right. I have that for Genesis 3, but not 8.
Well, it was a good rendering day. I can take a break.
I load in Genesis 8 and apply a Genesis 3 Bone Minion to it and convert the entire collection in one sitting. It takes a while if they're long aniBlocks like these, but in the end the worth is Incredible. Like getting a whole new pack of aniBlocks for this figure.
It can be easy to mess up, so I'll go through the whole process here. We'll use Genesis 8 Female for this example, and we'll call her G8F and Genesis 3 Female we'll call G3F.
01) In either timeline, turn looping off, so Play will stop when the animation is finished
02) Load in G8F
03) Go to Scripts > Riversoft Art > Bone Minion and, with G8F selected, double-click the G3F Bone Minion*
04) Select the Bone Minion (might have to open G8F's hierarchy)
05) In Parameters, click the "Bone Minion" parameter heading and change the top value "Automatic Pose Transfer" from On (default) to Off so it does try to write as we preview and apply aniBlocks
06) With Bone Minion still selected, load the first aniBlock
07) Scrub the timeline (DS or aniMate - doesn't matter) back and fourth once to get Bone Minion off that last pose from the last frame - even though it's sitting on frame 0
08) Head to the Daz Studio Timeline - Make sure it is set to "Show All Frames" in its parameter settings dialog
09) With the scrubber set at frame 0 - the very beginning of the timeline, Turn Bone Minion's Automatic Pose Transfer On
10) Hit the forward one frame button (wait a second) and hit the back one frame button to get back to frame 0 (locks in the pose at frame 0)
11) Hit Play and don't pass your mouse over anything that will preview a pose or animation, or we'll have to start over
12) It'll take a little while for the transfer to complete - good time to get a cup of coffee
13) Upon completion, since we're in the DS Timeline, we'll be on the last frame of the animation
14) Hit the rewind button to go back to frame 0
15) Turn Off Bone Minion's Automatic Pose Transfer**
16) In the scene pane, select G8F
17) Go back into aniMate 2 and right-click an empty part of aniMate 2 > Create aniBlock from Daz Studio's Timeline
18) Play it through in aniMate 2 to verify the everything is right.
19) Right-click the new aniBlock > Save as New > give your aniBlock a name and navigate to or create the folder to keep them in. aniMate defaults to the aniBlocks folder in your library, so the new folder can be put right there if you like
20) Select the newly saved aniBlock and click the garbage can icon above it to delete it from the scene
21) Select the aniBlock applied to Bone Minion and delete that one as well - in the timeline you'll notice that there are still some residual key frames on Bone Minion
22) In the scene pane, select the Bone Minion
23) Right-click the Timeline tab that you would use to open the Timeline pane > Clear Animation > Clear Figure Pose
24) Repeat the process for the new aniBlock.
It all goes very smoothly. Easier to do than to type.
* Only available if you've purchased a Bone Minion.
Bone Minion folder - if you have more than one Bone Minion for Genesis 3 Poses, there will still only be the one Genesis 3 Female Bone Minion. If you own the correct one, it will work on the figure you've applied it to.
When I work on these projects, I prefer to use (in this example) G8F Base Figure, rather than a character, just to make sure that the data is made for and taken from the main, base figure. It might not make a difference - so if I just want to do one conversion while my character is open, I'll go ahead and make the conversion (it's just joint rotation data after all) and also save the resulting aniBlock to potentially (definitely in my case) save time down the road.
** Automatic Pose Transfer On/Off is, unfortunately animatable. Meaning that, if it's already On and we turn it Off on the last frame, it's still On on the first frame.
When Automatic Pose Transfer is active (On), it will constantly send pose-change information to the target. You don't want that to happen any time except when actually transferring. Get into the habit of keeping this turned off except during the transfer, and Always at frame 0!