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Cinematic Animation in Daz Studio and DaVinci Resolve - WEEK 7

Week 7 - Writier's Block

We all experience times when the ol' creative juices aren't quite flowing in the direction we want them to. Sometimes, even, the story that's been brewing in our mind just escapes from the forefront of our attention span and we're just not sure what to do next.

We begin this week by exploring the endless collection of inspirational documentaries and showcases found in the INSPIRATION section of this website. There's a mini-Index below. 

Especially if we can pick a topic that is something we'd like to strive for, watching these sorts of features already helps to stir the pot of our imagination as to what more we can do during our adventures of rendering animations, while also helping to remind us that these huge production movies are made using scores of talented professionals working tirelessly over long periods of time to produce even the shortest computer-generated clip of the show. Reminding us that, what we do on our own, by ourselves - or even with the help of a few others... we need to be proud of our achievements. Celebrate them. Showcase them. And observe them as we grow in education, experience, and inspirational motivation.

We dive into the Daz 3D Store, but this time we're shopping for the things that we already own!

Use our Product Library in our Daz 3D account as well as our Daz Install Manager to explore the collection of assets that we already have available to us. The more we get to know our own libraries, the smoother all of this becomes!

A good practice while doing this is to actually load products into Daz Studio as they catch our eye from the list. Don't be put off by the age of the product - as in: when it was released to the store - because Iray has a tendency to make all of this stuff look great - even of we have to make little adjustments along the way.

Load in some cool scene. Set the camera angle to how we think it might work great as a background image for some of our animations. Render out a nice still image to be used as a backdrop in DaVinci Resolve.

In Week 2 we learn how to make motion templates to be used for "In Place" walk animations. We can do the same for any type of motion and use these to render moving backgrounds that work with our growing collections of character animations -  placing our character renders in more environments and different situations.

Rendering foreground elements as still images that we can use as a paint brush in DaVinci Resolve. Rendering animated props and VDBs not only gives us practice working with these systems, but also provides essential VFX elements for our productions. Rendering skies, either from sky domes from scenery products or from HDRI domes are fairly instantaneous renders. Start your collection of skies of all kinds that can be used behind scenery renders. This allows us to render scenery and characters using any HDRI as our lighting source and simply add the sky in post. This offers the wonderful ability to view the sky how we want to see the sky regardless of how it might be lighting (or not lighting well enough) the scene.

It's a Deep Dive

It's meant to get us all used to the idea of working quickly without the worries of having scene elements determine the lighting of our actors. It gets us better acquainted with the content that we have already collected which can give us a clearer view as to what we might find to be missing for the next time we go shopping for new assets.

Most Importantly, however, is that it grows our collections of needful renders and, at the same time expanding our base of inspiration putting our stroy-writing creativity back on track. Works Every Time!

The best way to get into animating (with any software choice) is to Animate, and Animate Often!

We've reached a point in all of this where we can start thinking about making animations for a story. 

The more we start thinking along these lines, the more inspired we'll become towards which aniBlock(s) to select for the Main Animation before we start 'sculpting it into our own'.

The more we play around with this, the more practice we're giving ourselves.

The more practice, the more experience. The more experience, the easier and faster, and BETTER everything gets!

When Trevor first joined the course, he left a message - a wish - a goal.

I loved the idea from the first reading of it and knew right away that I wanted to use this concept within the course. It's a valuable outline of an idea - and idea that someone wants to put into motion. And that's what we're all here for!

Not wanting to lose the message, I used the little three-dot menu on the upper right of the message and chose > Share > Copy Link. To give this link a home, I've started a new message - a place where we can all jot down ideas and/or refer to others by sharing links to them in the same way. 

Link to an Idea

I've also had an idea to use one of Kathleen's image posts as a means of a Storyboard from which we can launch an animation. So to that end, I've added that in a comment to the main message. :)

I have a small start on Trevor's idea which I share by clicking the button below:

"WalkFemIP" is my special nomenclature for animations that utilize Havanlibere's Walk Feminine walking motion, for which I have made a special rig for. "IP" means that the character is using the In-Place version of the animation - hence the need for a camera rig that moves the scene past the cameras as if Rosie was walking through 3D space along the Z axis.

In-Place walk animations means that there is no forward (Z axis) motion, but that there is a walking animation.

The WalkFemIP camera rig contains many cameras.

These cameras are intended to be used on Rosie when she is using the Havanalibere Walk Feminine "In-Place" animation. They are to help facilitate camera moves (or not moving at all) that work well when filming a walking actor for a movie or show. 

TrnTbl - a Turn Table camera that looks up at Rosie from the ground. A null that is centered on Rosie's position rotates the camera around her evenly.

REV - REVEAL - Name was changes specifically for this course to assist with clarity.

...Under Construction