For 2023 

...I began with the bulk of how I've made animation in Daz Studio my Favorite method of animation - Ever!

Like everyone trying to begin animation work in Daz Studio, I was struggling. But I knew that was going to happen. I wanted to Create (not wait for) a method of animation that Talks to Daz Studio, because I already knew that it's not really set up with the same timeline controls and features as a traditional animation software.

The answer hit me like a storm one day, but it still took a few months of working with the idea before the full method took shape.

It was when I decided to redesign Rosie into a different generation of Genesis when I decided to build a relatively complete set of these tools right from the start. I build these into the base of that generation Daz Figure and save it as a group of figure assets so that they work with All characters of that version of Genesis. 

Hence was born Rosie 7 

...as we've come to know her!

The base set really proved the system to be a Massive success! 

Although I wasn't thinking along this avenue at the time, what the system actually does is mimic the affect of graph editor edits, but using dials on the figure throughout the timeline - on their own line, giving the changes their own key frames that can be easily seen and manipulated, leaving the original motion capture occupy every frame in the timeline, if we allow it to.

Since the changes are made using dials separate from the actual joint rotation, we can ease them in and out or go in entirely different directions without the need to delete interpolation ranges of keys, nor are we required to figure out a new curve on the graph's spline. 

We're making our own new edits to the overall poses in a simple to interpolate manner - which has the added benefit of allowing us to be as creative as we want with our edits - it's all nondestructive to the original motion, and we don't have to drill into the hierarchy of every single joint rotation we want to edit - just change a simple dial on the character!

Like I said - tough to type. It's a lot more beneficial to Show you.

The Dynamic Character Animation Course

So to present this workflow in a way that I thought would be easiest to pick up on and use is to make a different kind of course than the usual structure of a tutorial:

I begin with an edited screen capture of myself working through an entire custom animation, using a good example animation idea to cover the complete workflow process.

Not too sophisticated to make the demonstration overly long or too complicated, yet planning out enough changes to truly show how this all works.

That takes up three videos - from starting with an unposed character, through a custom animation process, setting up for cloth and hair simulations, rendering, and finally a basic composite of the final sequence over a backdrop image.

Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio

Dynamic Character Animation Page @ Dartanbeck.com

A Digital Art Live Experience 

Now Available at Daz 3d - a Special new educational course that I've been anxious to share with everyone.

Paul Bussey, from Digital Art Live, offered an amazing opportunity for me to tell my story of how I've unlocked the key to a super-easy approach to animating in Daz Studio - something that a majority of animators consider to be nearly impossible, and for good reason. Daz Studio is set up differently than traditional animating software, making it feeling clunky, even unfriendly to folks who are used to animating.

Well such a thing is difficult to tell in a few words or even a single article here on the site. It's something that needs to be seen, worked through, demonstrated.

Paul's offer is just that. He loves seeing other artist's work and he has a wonderful drive at helping artists learn new skills to better themselves at what they want to do. In that, we are both incredibly similar, for those are my goals as well!

So we got together through several video conferences and built a solid idea on how to go about this beneficial workflow.

The result is a course that takes us from a full animation workflow from start to end, followed by individual tutorials related to the techniques used within the workflow.