Now Available at Daz 3d!!!
Paul and I are at it again! We thought it would be a Great idea to demonstrate ways to Really perform some Cool Magic with your Daz Studio work, whether it's animated or still.
This is one session you won't want to miss!
There are many ways to build, save and render our Daz 3D scenes.
In Movie Magic we’ll explore workflows for creating specific, separate renders that are purposely made to be melded together into a single, final image.
Whether for you’re making still images OR animations, these practices add Magic by allowing us total freedom over the look of Every element within the scene.
You’ll see how much Faster we can work – how much more we can get done with an efficient workflow.
The additional tools and elements demonstrated are not essential to the course, but shown to inspire creativity in using them. The main things that we will take away from all of this can be achieved with your own library of content assets.
New Movie Magic Expansion Articles
Awesome Webinar!
I had such a Great Time with you folks. Thank you So Much for coming!!!
I enjoy doing tutorials and videos, writing replies and advice, and these webinars through Paul at Digital Art Live give that wonderful ability to interact during the whole thing - which helps us All to learn and become even more inspired.
DAZ Studio : Movie Magic
In case you've missed the cool webinar, Paul and I will be delivering an optimized replication at Daz 3d
Keep an Eye out for More
Paul and I are collaborating on more and more webinars covering many of the topics that we can really excel at - the vision being a constant flow of sharing vital information on helping us all become who we really want to be within our experiences with DAZ Studio and other software and topics.
It's a Truly Wonderful World to Explore
This whole idea of working with digital media in creative ways really fires me up - as you've probably already guessed! LOL
With Paul's collaboration - along with others from Digital Art Live and Daz 3d - this vision just keeps growing and getting more and more exciting!
With Character Art being the main focus, we’ll:
Begin with a brief tour of such a workflow in action and demonstrate how much choice we have for the final result.
Explore the possibilities gained from rendering our characters as individual elements.
Explore various environments for our scene and discuss the possibilities they provide us as well as to give us a complete idea of how our character should look.
Start a library of Skies and other distant backing imagery.
Create a collection of Foreground, Midground, and Background elements.
Build layers of Foreground, Midground, and Background animations.
Build layers of Foreground, Midground, and Background animated effects.
See how we can use our saved character animations for changing the lighting, camera angles, costumes and hair… even the character itself.
All the while working towards our final work – in our example, a short video.
In each topic, we delve into several aspects that are related, discussing various directions we can take and how it affects the rest of the topics in the workflow. So by the end, we’ll have a cohesive set of assets – or ‘layers’, if you will – that all work together to make our final image come to life with an abundance of possibilities!
In this mini-course I’ll demonstrate character animation and show case studies, not the actual process of animation (this is demonstrated in my previous presentations) but what to do with the animated character after it’s saved, and demonstrate how the same animation can be used for many purposes.
The main things we’ll take away from all of this is to see a solid and powerful workflow for getting faster render times and a lot more creative power over the final result.
The examples in the post production phase will be performed in DaVinci Resolve, but the same or similar steps will be used no matter the compositing software of choice.
Join me on a Journey of Unleashing You Creative Juices!
Dartanbeck
Rosie 8 is an evolution of my entire 3D Art career. She was my original inspiration for animation and continues to drive my education, experimentation, exploration and fruition in this amazing world of rendering 3D creations in animated form to assemble in motion pictures.
The Rosie 8 page offers a view into my thoughts during her creation and it continues to grow as she evolves.
I get a lot of requests, comments, and questions pertaining to my lovely 3D avatar actress, so I like to keep a bit of an in-depth look into what it takes to be someone as special as Rosie. I make these pages for the sake of others, but I also enjoy coming back and enjoying them myself. It's amazing how much can happen in her development within very short periods of time!
2024 will be a year of developing and enhancing her entire workings in the hopes of improving her animations in exponential ways - hopefully immediately obvious in the resulting videos. We've come a long way in a short time, but compared to Rosie 4 and 5 in Carrara, Rosie 8 and I are still in our infancy within Daz Studio.
There are a lot of tools and features of Studio that are eager to help me process deeper and deeper improvements, and it seems that we're at a point where years of studying and experimenting are pouring in and starting to flow in a very organic and inspiring groove that has me even more excited than usual!
At the time of this writing, I have a plethora of news updates to add to the page - her new 2024 improvements.
Rendering for Layering
This is a short video I've created which inspired me to create an actual mini-course on the subject.
While we can gain a lot of workflow technique from this short, DAZ Studio : Movie Magic gave me the opportunity and pleasure of being able to dig much deeper into showing how I work in DAZ Studio.
I can often complete an animated sequence with all of the elements needed to go along with it in a day - sometimes more than one.
When things flow this smoothly, the entire experience becomes So Much More FUN!!!
I know... the names don't really do a lot for the product, but the promo images do - and then, when we look inside the product page... Oh My!!!
The best way for me to describe this one is that it's a modular cliff-building kit with a stream of water running through it - which could also be dry if we delete the water.
It begins with two environmental base scene with the stream carved into detailed ground with plant life in sparse areas. These look pretty cool on their own!
Then we get individual large stone props as well as grouped presets - again, we can use the plants or not, depending on our needs.
One of the promo images from the Sci-Fi Brig Construction Set shows many of the incredible pieces that come with this kit.
In the course, it's this wall panel with the three-pane window that I use for the Alpha windows of the star ship's exterior, while it's the large window from Airlock Construction Kit that I use for the interior, since I didn't have this kit yet. I'll likely change it to this one for the bridge so that they match up properly.
Both of these kits look Great with other star ship or sci-fi interiors and exteriors and have that Wonderful AntFarm style!
The Airlock sealing doorway is an incredible set of props that fit with hull parts in the set, allowing us to add doors to rooms that otherwise might feel too large for what we're using it for - closing off the rest of the vacant space surrounding the cool new door we just plunked into place!
This set contains 13 textures in total for the Sky System prop, giving you many different cloud options plus one for clouds and stars and two different ones for stars only.
The Sky System is rigged with a different bone for each of the four planes, so you can pose and spin the different segments to create an impression of time passing for sequential renders if desired.
Not only that, but there are fits included for both Zone A and Zone B of the Terradome 3 for Iray, making it easy to use this sky set with the Dome!
It's incredibly easy to use and a lot of fun to experiment with to get different skies!
Kudos Again, SickleYield!
Being able to recreate shadows and reflections in your 3D scenes enables you to insert 3D content into photographs and make it look like it belongs there.
Catcher Plus is a utility that makes it very easy to catch shadows and reflections leveraging the powerful Iray render engine. Floor and Wall planes can be easily created, and even existing geometry in your scene can be converted to catch shadows, reflections, or both.
The utility allows you to adjust the reflection amount, as well as the reflection blur to match up with the existing reflections in your background photograph. Simply selecting any catch you've created and running the script again allows you to make changes to the settings.
Catcher Plus is an excellent utility to add to your toolbox if you enjoy merging 3D items into existing still photographs.
Scene Optimizer is a set of tools which allow you to lower the memory required to develop your scenes and/or to speed up your renders. It gathers all the essential tools to lower the memory requirements of your scene, which can enable faster viewport manipulation and, in the case of Iray rendering, may enable you to use the GPU to render some scenes that didn't fit before optimization. That last point can result in a tremendous render time savings.
Are you wasting precious memory with maps you don't need or maps that are too high resolution on distant - or even close - objects? You choose which scene elements to optimize, guided by a list of your scene elements; sorted by distance from the camera, texture map size, number of maps, or number of faces in the mesh. You can process the action(s) of your choice on the elements checked in this list : reduce texture map size, remove normal maps, remove bump maps, remove all maps, remove translucency/SSS, or hide/show the scene elements entirely. There is no need to go into the Surface pane and manually find and delete these maps one material at a time any more.
Subdivision of High Resolution objects can be a memory hog. Scene Optimizer can change the subdivision level of multiple High Resolution scene elements at one time. Just select the elements in a check list of High Resolution meshes and click the button for the subdivision level you want. Instance optimization allows you to show or hide instances in the viewport or render, and to swap between memory and speed optimization for Iray.
Don't worry about reducing the texture map resolution or deleting maps. Scene Optimizer has you covered! Two additional convenient utility scripts allow you to save your original texture map state before optimizing and restore it later on any object you want, if you've made a mistake. This might surprise you; the save and restore scripts can also act as a convenient LIE baker, or texture set swapper.
Scene Optimizer is not just for Iray. It works with 3Delight too, even if the global benefit is less spectacular and requires more optimization actions than for Iray.
Even if all the scripts are very intuitive to use, instructions for all Scene Optimizer scripts can be found right in the script interface, and detailed instructions and tips for all three scripts are included in an illustrated PDF manual for the product.
What a Fantastic place to learn, share and absorb anything and everything Art!
Led by Paul Bussey, this fantastic place has a beautiful forum with an endless supply of topics - and we can join courses and training, or just hang out with the group and discuss and enjoy art!
Dartanbeck's Digital Art Live Animation Courses
Movie Magic is a stand-alone session, as are my other courses, yet they all work together nicely as a series of special workflows to really get our entire Daz Studio experience into Motion Pictures!
Fast - Fun - Simple - Fun - and it all turns out Looking Great!!!
Let's Get Animated with Daz Studio!!!
Did I say Fun?
Yeah... but only because I really meant it!
Using this workflow for animation has changed Everything! I loved animating before, but this...
Going from hearing (and believing) that we simply CANNOT animate in Daz Studio to having more fun animating in Studio than any other... I mean... What a Blast!!!
We needed a new home from which to grow all of this exciting information around animating in Daz Studio
For me, that all revolves around aniMate 2.
There's a Lot more to it than that, but it truly is aniMate 2 within Daz Studio that allows us to take any motion data and combine it and alter it in many ways before committing to the timeline.
And once we're in the Timeline, we can always send it back to aniMate 2 to blend in more, or....
The possibilities are endless!
In the CG Workshop - Story section I have a bit of an article: What Happened at Odysseon Station?
It's a showcase of the idea of using content availability to help drive a story. I used Nightshift3D's Odysseon Station series for the article after getting some of the kits (seeing a story in the product pages) and finding how wonderful they are to work with!
This feature is Awesome!!!
I've already started a bit of a history of Daz3d Humans, and I only got as far as showing Victoria's timeline, and this is an interesting look at how much these artists enjoy their experiences with Victoria!
I also have my own appreciation page for The Infamous Victoria 4 - she's such a well-made and versatile figure.
Beyond which version of Vicky is used, this video session is a real blast! Popcorn is made and I'm going to go watch this amazing feature again!
I'm friends with Philip and have followed all of his training videos for years. But that doesn't change the fact that I truly enjoy his style of showing us how to use this incredible art software!
Project Dogwaffle Howler is truly my go-to when it comes to editing textures, sketching a thought or a scene, painting a picture or even making changes to animated video clips I've rendered.
It never fails - as much as I've already learned from Philip, I always (Always!) learn something new when I watch one of his videos - and this is a full 2 hours + of excellent advice for working with animations in PD Howler!
Highly recommended!!!
This is Awesome - Check It Out!!!
Action VFX is a company built from young pioneers wanting to offer the world of VFX artists of all levels, from just trying to learn to full studio professionals a Top-Quality library of assets for use in any visual effects software.
I first leaned of them from the HitFilm YouTube channel when they were first starting out - and it was really exciting then.
As time unfolds, this amazing group of ambitious and amazing artists keeps pushing the envelop making more and more magic for our cinematic endeavors.
But now there's This? How Clever - How COOL!!!
Appreciation for Your Support!
In honor of the Wonderful People who enjoy what I do enough to offer support, This Appreciation Page is For You!
For those who have asked to remain anonymous, I have not included you in there. If you'd like to be included, I'd Love to!
Anonymous or otherwise, I really appreciate your Support - and All of it goes Directly into what I'm working on at that time, so it's a Huge benefit. Thank You So Much!!!
Every opportunity I get to make improvements is a delightful boon and helps push everything forward!
Special Thanks to All of You who donate a Gift Card Code!
I really appreciate it.
It's one of the only ways I can get this stuff and report back about it
- it Truly helps this site flourish!
Simply buy a Daz 3D Gift Card and Just Send me a PM with the Gift Card Code
So Thank You!!!
Need some of the Industry's Best VFX Elements for your movies at exceptionally great deals?
Look No Further!
I don't do subscription plans, but AVFX+ is much different - if you cancel, you keep what you got! But they also offer non-subscription sales as well - which is Brilliant! Check them out!
What a Fantastic place to learn, share and absorb anything and everything Art!
Led by Paul Bussey, this fantastic place has a beautiful forum with an endless supply of topics - and we can join courses and training, or just hang out with the group and discuss and enjoy art!