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I spend about ten hours over the weekend getting an animation right for the scene/render I submitted for the contest. This morning I saved the scene, terminated Daz Studio to clear the cache, memory leaks, and whatever else daz studio likes to do to slow down the computer.
I reloaded Daz Studio, loaded up the scene and started to render the animation. HAHAHAHAHAHA.. the f' was I thinking, believing everything would be just the way I saved it. When I got home I compiled the renders and made them into a gif.
Come to find out, that several of the primitive planes were misplaced. The LED rainbow lighting array for the christmas tree was totally gone and the candle flames animation disappeared.
Back in the day, I remember taking 24+ hours just to render a single scene. This one would have taken 30 hours for 360 frames. So I shouldn't be horribly angry, but I am. This would be the longest animation I've ever done on Daz Studio. Now most of the timeline is out of wack and missing several keyframes.
So, I'm just going to give up yet again. Thanks to Daz Studios quirky + primitive coding.
Here is about 1/3 of the animation. Enjoy?
Low Res webp (can't preview, have to download?): https://mega.nz/file/qZFFQBDL#keA_Z9ekP-LWyIE3zlfqbe_4Ucn0MLmbQmeapAVpxzs
Higher Res Vid: https://mega.nz/file/TVFAGI7Q#T71o0Xdxu-HBjd_esvnXPEPR3cED7QFFeNWY3LsqYKs
That's so great... love the little train and the smoke ❤."
".... believing everything would be just the way I saved it." Been there myself. No, I wasn't angry, I was bloody furious.Okay. After opening the scene back up last night, I was partially wrong. The smokestacks weren't kerfuffled like I originally thought. The rendered version doesn't really match the preview display though.. so the smokestack doesn't really line up with the steam engine chimney chute.
The candle flicker animation is still working correctly but may have been diminished by the bloom effect I was using.
I forgot to switch out the fireplace fire with an animated VDB..
The Christmas tree lighting array did disappear though.
I think I'll give it one more go. Add animation to the fireplace lights and Christmas tree (again), fix the smokestacks, switch fire in fireplace and candles to animated VDBs, and slow down the snowfall speed.
Thanks for the response.
Wow @Kefka, that's a lot of work. (And a lot of lost time. I'm sorry about that, it sucks. When DAZ breaks down it often does so spectacularly. Wish I didn't know aaaall about it. Feel your pain.)
So weird. A week ago I was inundated and considering not entering at all. Now, with a little more time on hand (very little), I was using an old animation to target-range a still, and one thing led to another (as usu) and the animation became the main.
It was actually going to be a "joke entry" because I didn't feel it was at render-level acceptability, at first, and so was just going to post for fun. Now, the one-thing has turned into multiple and it's become consuming again - enough to put gobs more time in and fine-tune, fine-tune, fine-tune into a thing.Just saying, it always seems the way. You think, "meh, that's good enough", and then you spend too much time re-thinking about it, and the next thing you know you're at it again, and adding, deleting, redoing, refining. ...[sigh/huff/chuckle] Never ends.
Anyway, @Kefka great scene and anim. Totally clear what you're going for. If the damn devil wasn't all in the detail I'd say "take a break", or "settle". But, like with me, I'm sure the sentiment would be consumed by a cloud of construction (picture some Warner Bros cartoon fight/construction cloud moving through, with limbs and parts poking out - and a sky scraper revealed when the dust settles), so I'll just say, "Awesome Work" instead. The scene is straight out of the movie, with great personal touches.
EDIT: P.S.: What are you using for your falling snow? And is the train smoke a VDB prop, but animated?
...Or are either/both postwork? Also, how many samples per frame in your final?(Read post in contest thread, some answered) (sry for all the q's)@Spats "You think, “meh, that’s good enough”, and then you spend too much time re-thinking about it, and the next thing..." And the next thing is that realise you've been working on it and looking at it for so long you can't really tell if it's any good at all anymore LOL.
A trick I use is to horizontally flip the image, and for reasons I can't explain, any problems become more apparent (or the whole thing looks shit and you start again).Yeah, I was going to try one more time on that contest page animation but I think it's best just to move on. I decided against VDBs because Daz studio has a stripped down VDB system (OF COURSE).
I could have used a script by Mcasual or ABAS: Animated Shaders System by Alvin Bemar. Alvin Bemar's stuff looks great in his videos but everything I have bought and used by him always ends up crashing Daz or it stops working for no logical reason. His product is what I used to make the flashing christmas lights AND OF COURSE.. it broke after save. I did end up using it again for the animation on the contest page but the fireplace lights AGAIN broke down and didn't follow the sequence I key-framed in.
The train smokestacks are 30 primitive planes using animated opacity maps. The snow on the link above (and the still frame on contest page) is https://zonegfx.com/iray-snow-ice-and-ash/ moving along Y axis. The snow on the animation on contest page is six primitive planes (3 primitive planes on top of one another x 2 different depths) slowly moving 'down' via Y axis.
Thanks for the compliment and take care!
@frank22 "And the next thing is that realise you’ve been working on it and looking at it for so long you can’t really tell if it’s any good at all anymore LOL."
☝ This.
I've tried the tricks, too. (There was once a paper somewhere written about flipping or rotating images upside down to detect errors or inconsistencies, since the human eye-brain connection works that way on the uptake.) But honestly, the only thing that's ever helped me to "decide" has been to walk away. Not for long necessarily, but at least a day in my experience helps quite a lot.
That, and looking at really good examples for inspiration and comparison/contrast.
@Kefka Great ideas and approach. Neat stuff. mcj's and AB's products are great, also a fan. Haven't had too much bogging down or crashing from the latter. Strange. Speaking of mcj, I think there was a materials animation script somewhere as well, wherein aspects of shaders/MATs could be animated incl colors and luminosity. Can't remember what it was called, and haven't used it yet, but may end up being required in a completely different upcoming idea-project.Speaking of mcj, I think there was a materials animation script somewhere as well, wherein aspects of shaders/MATs could be animated incl colors and luminosity.
Mcj's is called Matanim, I think. AB's ABAS UI is much more user friendly; that is why I used his.
I'm a little surprised that you've never had a crash using AB's products. I posted a render with hidden horror movie references around Holloween (Wasn't finished but still wanted to post it on Halloween). The room was reference to Nancy's room in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. It didn't have all the right furniture when I posted it.
I went back to it and started to kitbash/create all the furniture to get it perfect (And surprisingly the two I created were almost exact replicas of the movie). I used Gascon to make both the nightstand and wicker/bamboo??? chair but it would continuously crash. I had completed the nightstand and was VERY close to finishing the chair. I had just saved after a few hours of work and put the finishing touches on the chair. CRASH.. so I loaded up and found out the save was corrupt.
If I loaded up the save previous to that one, it would have been more than five hours earlier. So I gave up on updating the scene.
Daz Studio seriously needs an autosave feature that produces several saves.
So in the end, this is yet another reason I have to move away from Daz Studio. I've really come to realize that Daz is so limited with things I want to do and the only way I can do them is with products/scripts that work-around Daz Studio's intended functions.
Sadly I'm just too lazy to learn other 3D applications. If one thing could be said about Daz Studio, it is that it has a beautifully easy UI.
Can't wait to see ur animation @spats . You are posting it right?
Anyway, take care.
MatAnim, that's what it was, yeah. I might use that, or might go the AB direction you suggest.
I've used FLUIDOS and GESCON to great affect. There have been slow downs and close and questionable calls with GESCON (times when DS is on its knees and status-not-responding, sometimes for looong periods of time), but I've found that if I don't crank the Precision and Surface Adaptivity up too far, esp in conjunction with trying to preserve original surface and UV map, then it does ok (provided I walk away and don't mind the wait times). Eventually it does the job and comes out of its hang state. But no, never had a full-on crash with either. There have been times I've given up and killed DS because I was impatient, but not a crash. Strange.Not likely I'll get to a "full" render of the anim. (Have 6 characters in-scene in this particular instance, and rendering a single frame at 300 samples is taking around 26 minutes on this machine. There's 701 frames in the full, too-long anim, so if I wanted to preserve all the pretty, original shadows and not piece it out, that would be... 18,266m/60=304hrs theoretical >!<, so yeah no. Maybe a lower res or a small section, but without a Cray or a Watson or some such thing, this likely will be just another unrealized idea, in toto.) I'll have lots of options for a single still image for the contest (edit: currently being scrubbed of adult beverage content - in all the chars hands - not condoned on splash page, my bad for not thinking of it), but the best I might get to for an anim right now is a simple viewport series and stitch. We'll see.
Can completely relate to the DAZ vs big-boy 3D platforms. Too lazy/time-crunched for learning new tricks and tools. Too comfortable with DS UI and content libraries for days worth of drop and fit assets. Thinking seriously about an online (pref free) education commitment, wherin actual classes and tests are part of a formally planned curriculum. (As opposed to YT tutorials for "how do I do this part" type "learning".) But, again, time.
I barely have enough patience for a static image. No way I could do animations without going crazy.
I think you're like an alcoholic after his first AA meeting. You're really jumping all in after wanting to leave. Are you really sure you're not going to need at least a weekly fix?
Nice entry BTW. I always liked the movie. Not to the extent some people praise it but it's one of the better ones.
I think you’re like an alcoholic after his first AA meeting. You’re really jumping all in after wanting to leave. Are you really sure you’re not going to need at least a weekly fix?
Just want to complete my ZoneGfx bucket list. Everything is complete except compiling/posting all the content I've bought and putting it in the freebie forum.
Nice entry BTW. I always liked the movie. Not to the extent some people praise it but it’s one of the better ones.
Thanks. It was never really one of my favorite Christmas movies either but being a Cleveland native, I thought I would represent. The honor of favorite Christmas movie would probably go to Miracle in Cell No. 7 or Die Hard. 😛
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