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Genesis 8 animation exported from Motion Builder into Daz Studio. It's absolutely ridiculous how much trouble I went through to get this to import properly. There's still issues with minor feet sliding, but it's the daz rig, not the animation. All this time, the problem we've had with animations was due to Daz rigs and NOT the animation.
I'm so glad I finally figured this out.
Oh boy that's expensive software. Looks pretty good to me. What's the benefit over doing it in DS?
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I primarily use iClone. I really want access to dForce, though, since it's way superior to soft cloth physics in iClone. Hair is another thing. I have PopcornFX, so I have the fur plugin, but it's not as robust as Daz's hair system, which I own. It's more I wanted to see if it was possible. I've been trying to make animations for Daz users over a decade. There's no mesh floor in Daz anymore (it used to be there in V2) and animating with dials is painful for me, as I have 20 years experience animating in games and film. Now that I'm indie, I stick primarily with iClone, but I have a soft spot for Daz, due to the HD morphs and dForce clothing. It's an even bigger PITA to convert all the HD morphs to vector displacement in ZBrush to use in iClone.
The GOOD news is, with a little practice, the 40k animations I just dumped on here for iClone can be converted to each Generation of Daz character, including Legacy Generations, 3 and 4. The BAD news is I have to retarget all those animations to mixamo's YBot skeleton, since it's humanIK compatible out of the box, retarget each one to a Daz model, one at a time for EACH Generation. At least now, I can save the animations out as a pose preset without the rig exploding.
Those minor movements you see in the feet, though, they're not supposed to be happening. That's something to do with the Daz skeleton. It does it in Motion Builder.
And don't worry about the cost for Motion Builder. The subscription is a write-off. 🤪
Ah!, and always export via python to fbx 2013 version.
I haven't installed Genesis 9 yet.... I can see some trouble coming for sure! 😀@Abad - What are these - animation skeletons? I'm still running into feet sliding. It's minor in MB, but as SOON as I put them in Daz, it's like they're skating on ice. You would think after 17 years, Daz would have gotten some sort of modernization in their animation toolset: mesh floors, proper hand/foot ik restrictions, fbx import for skeletons, instead of their kludgy system.
Yeah, their "Bridge" absolutely sucks. You can't even pull an animation into a duf, even though it says you can. I proper t-pose models for each Generation, including Legacy 3 and 4. Even the HIK rig they make for you breaks in MB - it won't recognize the twist bones. It's sad, too, 'cos they bought the plugin from the original developer and HIS actually worked. Daz borked it, when they "upgraded" it.
Thanks for the hints, Abad. I'll probably start from scratch, with clean exports from Daz. I was jumping back and forth between Maya and MB, as well as other stuff, trying to get this to work. It's bad enough I have to retarget each animation to the mixamo bot, first, just to characterize all them. That's why I like iclone. Smaller files.
I tried your rigs and ran into the same problem with foot sliding in Daz Studio. It's going to be impossible to import animations properly in Daz, due to it's archaic design and limitations. I mean, I COULD convert all these animations, but then people are going to have to use KeyMate and GraphMate to clean up the sliding by hand and that's something I'm really not interested in doing. To me, it's too much trouble just to use dForce.
@methuselas The feet sliding It happens because you don't apply in character/properties, floor contacts, etc, and some constraints. Then, always, FILTERING by peak removal, gimball killer, or unroll rotations. And, in plot, never use "constant key reducer": Better, in filters, "Key reducing" at "precision" around 0.3 +/-....
And in daz, import the fbx 2013 and keep "limits off" in all bones, before save as duf pose.Oh wow. You have to go through that much trouble just to retarget for Daz? Man, that makes me even more mad at Daz, for all their minor "upgrades" instead of doing any under the hood work, when it comes to animation tools again. I did a quick test and it appears to help correct the foot sliding, but there's gimbal spin in the hips. It may have to do with my messing with the filters in the hip. I know that Daz only allows hip translation and everything else is rotation. The floor contacts seem to help with the sliding as well. What other restraints are you using in the character? I've never had this much trouble re-targeting animations in MB. As a matter of fact the re-targets work in EVERY application I've tried EXCEPT Daz. 🙄
I'll give it a go again.
Can you give me a step by step on how you set up constraints, floor contacts and filters before you export the retarget, so I can mimic your exports? It will be a lot faster than me just randomly clicking filters and restraints hoping for the best.
LOL That's why I never use daz for animations: It's meant to make "Iray trash pictures"!. It is NOT an animation program and its fbx importer is bonfire worthy. I have tried to understand this code, and manipulate it, but it has always given me compilation errors. In "Issues" of this post, it's me, with problems in cmake.
https://github.com/daz3d/StudioFbxImporterIf I have some time today, I'll prepare a video..
Man I am jealous! That's a lot of work! I remember fooling around with Poser 7's animation setting. What a pain in the ass to export!
But you exported it out of DAZ and into another program? Daaaaayum!!!!Daz is ABSOLUTE trash. The only thing good about Daz are it's vendors. They make some amazing shit (only to ruin it with things like "high heels" for fantasy armor), the Dragonhide PCS bundle, for example. (Which reminds me, I need to post it here. 😉) The rigging and paint weight tools are a joke, it chokes on high poly models or too many models makes it crawl. They don't make a root bone, they use the hip joint as the root, which screws everything up and if you're animating, you have to be mindful of that. Hell, as I stated before, their "Bridge" doesn't even export animations, like it says it will. It won't even let you select a control rig to export from.
I'm using Daz specifically as a glorified character creator FOR reallusion's Character Creator, so the irony of using it is not lost on me. Most of the HD Genesis characters I've already converted to vector displacement maps to use in iClone, but I just wanted to check out dForce. They couldn't just use nCloth or some other standard that was cross platform. Nope, Daz had to make their own proprietary system in an attempt to force OTHER apps to their standards. Just like their volumetric plugin. They couldn't integrate PopcornFX, which has been around for a decade and offers many VFX packages from Unity and Unreal. All Daz does is take up space on my drive, when it's only used to export stuff. That's why I've been slowly importing all my daz stuff into CC3.
If it's that much trouble, don't worry about it. I can just deal with making masks for soft cloth physics in iClone. It's not THAT bad. The dForce hair, I can just export out as objs and convert to hair elements. I just wanted to check out dForce to see how stable it was and to get some decent animation sets for Daz users (even their animation packages are a joke.) I've NEVER had a problem retargeting animations to ANY engine or application, until I started messing with animations in Daz. Hell, I retargeted dragon animations to Dragon 3 and they work flawlessly in Maya, MB and iClone.
Can't get them into Daz, though. Not without feet sliding. 😉
Animating with dials is painful. Daz Studio misleads you with their "IK" tools. REAL IK controls would bend at the knees, if you pull the hips down. Daz doesn't do that. It doesn't recognize a floor mesh, 'cos it doesn't have one. All their "jcm" morphs only screw with animation retargeting, as they're not used, nor exported.
Daz3D is the Steam of the Hobbyist Rendering community. They provide nothing, but the shell and grift off their vendors eating their 30%. I was going to work as a vendor for a while, until they told me that making models that use their skeletons to be "Genesis compatible" was a violation of their "IP rights." When I pointed out that I could just remake a skeleton with their naming scheme, meaning they wouldn't know if I used their own skeleton or my own, they got hostile. So, I explained how IP laws actually worked and got banned from their forums. LOL! I even had one of their Mods follow me to Renderosity. I moved over there and started asking questions about being a vendor, complaining about Daz's draconian rules and the SAME mod that banned me popped up and started talking shit on another website. 🤣🤣
Man, even their forums are archaic. Makes me wonder who is running the show there. Seems like a 2-man operation or something.
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