Animation with Poses using DAZ Studio

Author: Gary_P

Tools Needed

• DAZ Studio
• DAZ Troll or another figure

Animating with DAZ Studio is a great way to get started in the world of 3D. I have been animating in Poser for a year now, and I like DAZ Studio much more. Is it the OpenGL, or the ease of moving body parts? I don't know. I only know it is my choice of animating programs.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how easy it is to animate a character without touching any body parts, using only stock poses, and the new DAZ Troll.

The first thing you want to do is set up your screen.

Open the Windows menu and choose Timeline or just press Ctrl+6.

Now move your cursor to the top of the timeline window until it turns into a 4 way arrow. Click and drag the timeline so it docks to the top of the screen like this.

Now bring in the character you are going to use.

Since I just got the DAZ Troll, I'm going to use him, but you may use any character you like.

In this animation, my character is going to stretch his arms in the air like an angry Troll.

Then he is going to bring them down and crouch and go into a fighting position.

First a little background. In DAZ Studio you can animate anything in your scene.

This includes any objects, lights, and cameras.

Every item in your scene has different settings or parameters that can be changed to produce an animation. You may also animate any object's scale, rotation, translation, and shape. You may also animate any of your light's color, position, and intensity.

Creating an animation means making only small changes to an object over time.

An Animation is created by assembling a lot of individual images also known as frames. When a series of frames that vary slightly from one frame to the next are displayed one after another, very quickly, your eyes see them as movement.

The Animation Timeline window looks a bit scary at first, but it's not as bad as it looks.

Along the top is the slider control, or the scrubber. The scrubber is used to quickly find specific points within your animation.

You simply click and drag the Scrubber to navigate your animation.

You also use the scrubber to mark out the individual frames in your animation.

Frames are points in time where you set the pose. Let's say we want our character to lift his arm. We set the current frame position to 1, pose him with his arm down by his side, and set one of the dials on the right side of the screen. This sets what is called a key frame.

Then we set the current frame to a higher number like 30 and pose him with his arm over his head, which sets another key frame.

When the scene is rendered, DAZ Studio will create 30 individual frames (or pictures) numbered from 1 to 30 with our character's arm in positions from his side to over his head.

This process is also called tweening, because DAZ Studio is creating the frames in-between the key frames.

Rendering is a fancy word for a program's ability to create your scene, calculating all of the textures, shadows and lights, and producing a finished image.

Because DAZ Studio uses OpenGL, we can see the actual animation without rendering, and then render it when we want the finished product.

At the lower-left is where you set the total number of frames.

Next to it to the right is the Range. This sets up the From and To frames on the upper top portion of the timeline.

It's like zooming in on the timeline. Let's say we are working on a big animation, and the timeline is set from 0 to 510 frames (17 seconds).

In order to see the individual frames, you could set the range from 0 to 90. This would not change the total number of frames, just the frames that are viewable on the timeline.

Next to the Range is the Current frame. You can type in a number here to move the timeline to a frame, or slide the slider to that frame. Next to it is the time code display. This displays the exact time of your animation in hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.

Next to the time code display is the FPS, or Frames per Second. Animations typically run anywhere from 15 to 30 frames per second. This means that it takes 30 frames of pictures to create one second of animation. It's no wonder that animation companies have super computers that do all their processing overnight.

Next over to the right is the loop button. If you turn this on, your animation will continuously play until you press the stop button.

Next over to the right is a button for deleting keys at the current time. This deletes any key frames on the current frame, depending on what body part you have chosen. For example if you have moved an arm at frame 25, and also moved a hand at frame 25, then selected the hand, and pressed this button, the key frame for just the hand would be deleted.

The next buttons are really easy.

They are (from left to right):

Skip to Beginning – this sets the timeline to the first frame.

Skip to Previous Keyframe - this moves the timeline to the previous keyframe you set.

Go to Previous Frame – this steps back one frame.

Play/Pause Animation – this starts and stops the animation.

Go to Next Frame – this steps forward one frame.

Skip to Next Keyframe - this moves the timeline to the next keyframe you set.

Skip to End – this sets the timeline to the last frame.

That's it for the controls.

Click your mouse on the Orbit Camera button and drag your viewpoint around so you can get a good view of this guy.

Well, this is not a very good pose to start off in. He looks more like he's getting ready to take off and fly then growl and fight, so we'll tweak him a little.

I'm going to show you how to cheat big time on animating this guy.

In the pose library, you will find DAZ Troll. Scroll down to the pose called Standing and, making sure the figure is selected in the main window, double-click on the Standing pose.

Now Mr. Troll is set to begin and it only took us a second to set this pose. I use this technique for Vicky and Mike all the time.

Now to figure out how long it would take him to move his arms up into a roaring position. I went out and bought a cheap stopwatch. I paid under 10.00 USD for it, and I torture my wife with it all the time.

But you can use yourself, or your friends for this. Set the timer, and see how long it takes for your subject's body to move into a position. Too long and it looks like he's stuck in time. Too short and he looks like the Son of Flash.

We're going to use one second for him to bring his arms up to a roaring position. Then we are going to use another second for him to move into a fighting position. Set the Total frames to 60, being 30 frames per second, times two seconds.

And while you are at it, please set the Range from 0 to 60 also.

Set the time slider to 30 for the first second.

Scroll or move to the pose that says ROAR!!!. This will set Mr. Troll to the arms up roaring position we want.

It is useful to note here that we now have a small animation and we did not have to move a single arm or leg by hand.

We could just slide the slider to 60, and choose the pose called Crouch, but BEFORE WE DO, let's think about this for a second shall we?

What will happen if we do this? Mr. Troll will go from a standing position to raising his arms and immediately bring them down to a fighting position. Looking like he just had a great stretch and yawn, he's ready for battle. Nope, that is not what we want here.

We want him to hold his arms over his head for a full 2 seconds.

Wait! We already set up our timeline, right? Yes, and no.

DAZ Studio is so easy to use, that we can extend and retract our timeline as many times as we want to.

Note, that if we retract it, then we'll lose the frames past the point of retraction.

Let's set our timeline to 120 (30 times 4), and also set the Range from 0 to 120.

Now set the current frame to 90 and choose the ROAR!!! Pose.

Hang on a minute! We just did that. Yes, and we need to do it again because if we don't, then Mr. Troll will just take longer to bring his arms down to his sides.

Confused? I thought so. It took me a while to get this down too.

Please let me explain how this works.

At frame 0, start the pose.

At frame 30, raise your arms. So the arm raising will take place from 0 to 30. Great.

At frame 120, go into a Crouch. So the Crouch will take place from frame 31 to 120. No! That's not what I wanted.

Ah! Get the picture? Here is the correct order:

At frame 0, start the pose.

At frame 30, raise your arms. So the arm raising will take place from 0 to 30. Great.

At frame 90, raise your arms. So since there is nothing to do, I will stand still with my arms raised. Great.

At frame 120, go into a Crouch. So the Crouch will take place from frame 91 to 120. That's what we wanted.

Ok, now let's set our frame pointer to 90, and choose the ROAR!!! Pose.

Now we will set our frame pointer to 120 and choose the Crouch pose.

All finished. Click the Skip to Beginning button, and then play the animation by clicking the Play button.

What's wrong with him?

He's raising his arms, then stretching out his big gut, and then going into a Crouch position. Well unless he's in a beer belly show off's, this is not what we want. What happened?

This is called an Anomaly. Something in the sea? No, it's a fancy name for a glitch in the system.

My dictionary calls it a deviation or departure from the normal or common order, form, or rule.

There is nothing wrong with DAZ Studio, or your computer. It's the software thinking for you again.

So how do we get rid of it? I have not figured out a perfect way yet. This happens in Poser also.

We'll try setting out timeline to 60, and choose the ROAR!!! Pose. Now it does not look so bad.

You can pin the pose even more rigidly by applying the ROAR!!! pose to frames 31 and 89 instead.

So there you have it. A full animation that only took about 10 minutes to make, using some stock poses.

Like I said at the beginning of this tutorial, you could have used Michael, Vicky, or any other character for this.

I chose the DAZ Troll because I think he is very cool.

The only thing to watch out for, is when the character moves from one pose to the next and moves one body part through another. The figure's arm or hand might move through its belly.

But that's another tutorial.

Any questions or comments please IM me here at DAZ.

Happy animating!