Tag :: DAZ

True Crimes: The Shooting Mocap Pack Coming Soon!

We’ve just finished putting together the work on a new motion-capture pack of animations for you. True Crimes: The Shooting is the first in a series of complete mocap scenes that you can add to your animated projects using DAZ|Studio’s Genesis, G2M, or G2F characters.

One of the big challenges that we have faced as animators – and we’re pretty sure that you’ve faced it too – is that it’s tough to come up with complete scenes from existing motion capture data. You are either faced with keyframing data, trying to make existing mocap fit, or investing in your own capture system. It’s a challenge any way you look at it.

So, we want to make things easier. We want to see more people doing animations and one of the tools that we’re going to provide to help you do more animated films is complete mocap scenes. Each self-contained scene will have multiple characters all interacting, giving you plenty of opportunities to shoot the scene the way you want. You can either animate the scenes as a single take, or, if you want to get more sophisticated, you can set up multiple cameras and animate the scene with multiple cuts and angles.

In this short scene, a gunman confronts a snitch. We’ve even given you the choice of two endings – one where things don’t end well for the snitch, and one where things don’t end well for either of the two characters. As always, we provide data in aniBlock, PZ2, and BVH format – and we’ve also added in dozens of still poses for the still artists out there!

We’ve picked the theme of True Crimes for our first set of mocap scenes, which will allow us to provide lots of motion capture of thrilling action – just the kind of mocap we love doing. Look at the rest of our catalog if you want proof! Expect lots of Film-noir style action from this and upcoming packs. But remember that you can go way beyond the film-noir genre. True Crimes: The Shooting can be used in almost any setting – film noir, thriller, pulp, superhero, science fiction and even westerns!

Look for True Crimes: The Shooting to be available soon, and look for more in the True Crimes series in the coming months!

Can Poser really be used to make a Movie?

This is not an unusual question. Both Poser and Daz|Studio have long been known as methods for creating outstanding looking still images, but not so much for animation.

Now, if you go onto any CG Animation forum on the net, you’ll likely find that lower-cost programs like Poser and Daz|Studio are not held in the same esteem as more expensive programs like Maya, 3DS MAX, Lightwave and Softimage. The perception is certainly out there that “good” animation needs expensive software and that the more expensive the software, the better the animation.

While it is true that the more expensive programs tend to have extensive toolsets, the capabilities of lower-cost programs have been expanding tremendously over the past few years. And for programs like Poser and Daz|Studio, they can indeed be used to make movies.

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