ZBrushCentral

ZAnimator, The Zbrush Animation Plugin: Video Demos (Update, Added a Test Doodle)

Shared ZScripts & Macros
#81

Hi there and thanks for your interest guys

I may not have said it here but this project has been halted since Pixologic released the new timeline / animation features etc.

Furthermore they don’t seem to have added ZScript support for the timeline making it hard to use the new features for an advanced ZAnimator which would have been a logical next step so I can utilize their built in timeline and animation system and add more to it, it’s really unfortunate.

@Digits:
Also ZSphere posing still remains as it was, unfortunately I dont think they fixed the destrutive posing deformation when it comes to twisting Zspheres etc, still must be manually healed etc. The ZSphere scale issue with ZScript has been fixed however since 3.5 so thats no prob

Thanks again, was a good run =)

#82

It amazes me that so many wonderful new things can be added and enhanced in each ZBrush release… and yet there are sneaky little documented and reported bugs that seem to survive like roaches through many generations of ZBrush code.

My personal pet peeve:

Many years back I ZScripted a neat little material manager (called ZMats) that permitted the user to easily save and retrieve Z-materials. This was back before MatCap even. When a material was saved, the lighting and the color setup was also saved so you could guarantee the reloaded material would look exactly like it did when you saved it. It all worked and it was simple and very useful providing a way to organize and manage a library of up to 2000 materials and 400 separate lighting setups.

With the release of 3.0, a bug was introduced, a strange little bug that would instantly crash ZBrush when a light setup was saved IF THE Light menu was NOT MANUALLY/PHYSICALLY OPENED FIRST. Huh?

Anyway, the work-around (suggested by Pixologic at the time) was to simply include the ZScript Show command to momentarily open the Light menu the first time a Light was saved during any ZBrush session. It was a “temporary solution” but it worked and the ZMats 3 plugin was released.

Then, with the release of 3.1, the work-around stopped working. I think it was because the Show command and several other related ZScript commands originally intended to be used during interactive tutorials inside ZBrush were modified or disabled completely. At the same time, the strange little Light menu bug that crashed ZBrush still remained.

And ever since, that little bug survived, intact, through releases 3.2 and 3.5, so I simply disabled the ability to save light setups from the plugin.

I am frustrated to report that the bug STILL SURVIVES in the 4.0 release of ZBrush (and I’d be willing to bet it could have been fixed by changing one or two lines of ZBrush source code, three releases ago.)

I know it seems a little thing, but it’s not. ZBrush 4.0 can instantly and reliably be made to crash with one unfortunate script command (IPress, Light:Save before the Light menu has been physically opened) and that is simply unacceptable, especially since the bug has been reported through several betas.

I doubt it will ever be fixed. If there is to be an updated version of ZMats for 4.0, it will be without the ability to save lighting setups… unfortunate - because with the new Best Preview Render and the enhanced options for materials, lighting setups become VERY relevant again.

Sven

Darukin: ZScripted control of the Timeline was a dream I had entertained too. Maybe in 5.0. :cry:

Digits: I sure do wish you were able to release 4.0 updates for all those wonderful scripts of yours. Nice to see your name here again, btw!

#83

Hi Digits - I for one would like to see your Terrain Maker or maybe it was called Terrain Widgit redone for ZB4;)

So it’s a wait for ZAnimator.

#84

Hey guys sorry for late reply, didn’t see these posts, thanks for dropping by again Sven and Spaceman =)

Yea I can so relate Svengali!

Basically, a lot has been enhanced especially in the Layers system, and even some ZSphere improvements now that I’ve noticed.

As a result, many doors have been opened to push this plugin to new levels that I coudn’t achieve before!

Everything is great and all, except one thing… NO ZSCRIPT ACCESS TO TIMELINE lol!

I can achieve what I was doing before with this but problem is that the interface will suck, and I was just entertaining the idea of my ZAnimator merged on the Z4 timeline interface, plus with the enhancements and new doors open with Z4 it would be a fine touch. It’s unfortunate and I’m kinda frustrated bout that lol, there’s always that one blocking factor/ limitation that holds u back, ALWAYS, otherwise I’d be much farther with this

Without use of proper built-in timeline it’s really hard to achieve true playback time representation in preview mode without capturing it into movie first etc and that’s a key problem

Anyhow thanks for visiting my thread, cheers!

#85

For those who were following this thread, I’d just like to let you all know that I have brought ZAnimator back to life in light of the doors opened with the new Z4 features, despite the lack of ZScript access and support to timeline.

Many new enhancements. True preview playback time (solved) and speed increase, claymation across multiple sub-d levels where they work in harmony (this uses enhancements in layers system of Z4), and proper bug-free ZSphere animation which can be done seamlessly alongside claymation on a rigged mesh so that u can ZSphere-rig animate a low res model and claymation the higher res levels as a pass over that animation simultaneously. Finally I will add proper animation blending etc so to eliminate linearity. This is all possible now due to new Z4 fixes, enhancements and features.

Will post new videos as soon as I can
Thanks for all your support
Cheers!

#86

Hello darukin… congratulations for zanimator and thanks for working on it …
you said :“I have also suggested a ZSphere weighting feature on binded meshes through use of masks etc that they might look into.”
do you think it would be posible to access the weight vertex map used in zbrush and change it?

#87

Hi there thx

dargelos, this is currently not possible, I don’t have that much access, I’m just ZScripting ^^
That depends on Pixologic

#88

I think Zbrush already have the tools to animate or rig very well and fast but the only weak point is the autoweight that works very well for some things like fingers or tentacles but not for whole characters. I found a free plugin for maya called “heatweight” that uses the pinocchio algorithm to generate weights to any given bone structure… i wish something like this could be used with zspheres some how if not inside zbrush maybe messing with ztl files???.. I wish it would be possible to edit ztl files … i´d like to mess insise the file schema im pretty sure they store weighting in some way. i guess thats also impossible but maybe someone knows better.

#89

Hi ,zbrush 4 is already released but zanimator is not available …any idea when is going to be released …

#90

I like this idea…what zbrush user doesnt? My only worry is how fluent and easy it can be to animate within ZB.

Hence, I favor how easy to time your poses. Flip book is has a great approach with timing your frames. I like how you can use numeric keypad while a frame is selected on the x-sheet to space and time your frames. Select frame, hit a numeric value like 5 and now watch a frame hold for 5 frames. It would be nice is z-animator can have an x-sheet type UI with ability to toggle to time line as well.

Not sure if you thought of an idea of making use of 3D layers to blend in various sculpts for lipsyncing and using the timeline to animate to selected layers. Kind of like the zb blend shape plugin but only cooler because its directly in ZBrush it self.

Would be cool to animate shaders/materials.

Would be cool in future - exportation feature to various motion file formats.

Would be nice to have image sequence on a 3D plane and roto with ZAnimator’s timeline.

Would be nice to also use a store button function to retain alpha masks as weight map for ZB rigs.

Great work, cant wait to try this…patiently waiting.

-3D

#91

anymore news on this project? seems the last post was fairly recent but nothing from the creator of the plug-in in a good long while

#92

Hi there
Thanks for your interest in this project guys! All advice and ideas are taken into account.

The fact of the matter is that the project is on hold. This is for a number of reasons:

  1. Time: I’m working full-time as a phD student and part-time.
  2. The Zbrush ZScript interface is still far too limited to achieve the functionality desired quickly enough across both blend shapes and skeletal animations simultaneously. I mean ZScript does not even provide support for accessing the new built-in timeline, and I had to build my own from scratch.

This does not mean however that the project is cancelled, just on hold for now. There is so much more I can do for Zbrush and animation were Pixologic to provide a more extended and flexible SDK, which ideally would include GoZ SDK and also control of individual elements of the model such as individual vertices and vertex weights. That way I can apply my own system from scratch and have full control over the plugin features. For now however I have to make too many hacks to achieve some of these results.

For example, the addition of mdd format is great (very fast efficient point cloud animation format) and in fact I can write my own mdd exporter and all but this is not possible as I do not have access to vertices nor do I have access to vertex weights in ZScript. If Pixologic can provide this in the SDK it would be amazing, but it’s up to them for now. I also suggested a system of weight-painting using painted masks for Zspheres upon vertices.

Furthermore, my phD research is in the field of animation. This means I am exploring lots of interesting rigging and animation ideas using very interesting maths properties. We’ve gone as far as using Laplacian mesh-editing and preserving local detail of meshes in pose. We have programmed some solution already, and other solutions are even available for implementation.

For instance check this out, a new technology I’ve been reading into as part of my research lately. I would love to implement this in Zbrush, as it’s a great way to automate shape-aware vertex weighting which preserve volume and local detail!

You can imagine the possibilities

//youtu.be/P9fqm8vgdB8

Thanks again!

#93

any idea of when work might continue?

if there isn’t one or you don’t think that’ll be anytime soon (or within a year) then would it be possible to make a series of episodes with just posing the figures or something

my decided style isn’t especially complicated, like a hybrid between cell-shaded toon & claymation, if anything the animation would be a wee bit “choppy” kind of like “Team Fortress 2 Gmod YouTube Poop” type of animation

so do you think Zbrush would suffice already or should i wait? there’s plenty of time for me to wait i’m just starting and it’s still in the early storyboarding process

(Also, that video brings me some hope, I’d love to have something like that mixed with the timeline to animate with, I hope they do decide to utilize it in Zbrush)

#94

Take to heart what he was saying in his last post. Pixologic will need to open the SDK a little more for the Developer to give us a working plugin. SDK is a (Software Developer Kit) that companies release for 3rd party developers that allows them to make addons for their software, within the confines of the kit. So, if Pix is interested in this plugin, perhaps they will get in touch with him and see what is needed.
an example of this would be a map maker for Doom or Quake. UDK for Unreal game engine (their map maker).

If you know what an SDK is, than I am sorry. Was not trying to insult you. :wink:

#95

I hope they do get interested, having to go to another program like maya or 3DSmax to do animating is kind of annoying, it reminds me of working with old game editors where you often have to find bogus work-arounds to do things that should’ve been supported in the first place, they’ve already got a whole timeline/keyframe system with alot of potential why not use it to it’s full potential I’m thinking? And no I didn’t know what a SDK was (though I did know what UDK was) so thanks for that.

#96

ya I know what you mean. But, in 3d work you always have a pipeline of at least 2 or 3 programs. If your really interested in Animation with a good 3D Physics engine, I recommend Carrara 8 Pro. It’s far cheaper than Max or Maya, has bullet physics, and also has a GoZ Plugin. I use it often. It has a nice render engine. Fast rendering. Carrara is more of a complete package, similar to Max or Maya. You can add sound and music to your animations, Has many types of modeling options, Vertex and so on. Has a Dynamic hair system. Its very cool.

I reccomend Google-ing it. You won’t be sorry. :cool:

#97

hmm can it support Zbrush materials? i’m assuming since it has a “goZ” function it probably does to some extent

#98

i looked it up and i’m still not sure if that’s really what i’m looking for, i haven’t really seen any examples that show a more “soft” cartoony or “digital paint” look to 'em, while i have seen exactly that with zbrush, i’m not sure if you even can get that look with cararra

i think i’m gonna be waiting this one out, give it a few months and see what comes up, if they decide to make the additions/changes or it turns out carrara or another program is the right one for me i’ll know by then

#99

I can’t believe I just found this. Has there been anymore development?

#100

will be included in 4R7 version?