Greetings In this video we are going to look into aniBlocks What they are and how to handle them The ways to edit aniBlocks and even turn them into regular keyframes Let’s start with introducing the concept of an aniBlock They are the blocks of information about animation And using these blocks you can create prolong animations very easy Now we will look at how to use them To start working with aniBlocks we will need to open aniMate window aniMate Lite is a free version of aniMate that built-in the Daz Studio You should be able to find it on the bottom left of your screen If it is not there, you can always open any window if you go to the Window > Panes Here is the aniMate Lite The interface of aniMate is fairly simple There is a figure that we are animating on the left Timeline on the right with a playhead that can be moved And all the main buttons on top Like Play, Loop or go to start and end To create an aniBlock we need to add an animation All the animation presets can be found in the Smart Content tab Just make sure that you figure is selected It should be highlighted with yellow And the Animations tab appears Here you can hover over any of the animations and see the preview in real time I want to use this dance animation To apply an animation to the character, simply double click on it After double clicking, it appeared in the aniMate timeline right away You can see this blue rectangle on the timeline And when I press play - the same animation that I have previewed earlier plays out My character is dancing I can even drag the playhead to look at each frame of the animation So this blue rectangle that was added Is what is called an aniBlock A blue block that contains an animation in it Except for the Smart Content window, aniBlocks can also be found directly in the aniMate At the bottom left we have a list, where if you open aniBlocks > aniMate path, you can see all the available categories I will select Dance folder At the bottom, a bunch more blue rectangles appeared These are the same animations that we had in the Smart Content Just shown in another way You can hover over them to preview animation in exactly the same way And here is the one that I have added earlier Same animation plays when I press play Of course there are ways to interact with these aniBlocks, to edit them The easiest one to both understand and use is that you can move them Simply click and drag the aniBlock and it will be moved on the timeline Which changes when animation starts and how it plays out And by moving the End of Animation gizmo, you can change when animation ends So if it is in the middle of aniBlock, animation ends early The main way of editing appears only after selecting one If you click on the aniBlock, it will change its look And a bunch of new buttons will appear above These buttons is how you change the most about this particular animation For example, you can change its speed Make it faster Or make it slower too Also here is where you rotate an animation, because rotation character does not work You can also Reorient Start now Delete selected aniBlock And also Align to guide This one adjusts selected aniBlock on the Timeline After learning the basics of aniBlocks, we now can go further And introduce the aniBlock Sequence It is when a bunch of them go one after another and create a single long seamless animation To create a sequence, all you need to do is add another aniBlock To create a sequence, all you need to do is add another aniBlock It can be done by finding the one you like and dragging it before or after the one you have Alternatively you can double click on it But it will appear at the beginning of animation To change them places, you can drag them Here is how this animation looks Character performs first action that smoothly transitions into another There is no seam, meaning that it is hard to see the place when one aniBlock ends and another one begins But depending on the particular aniBlocks, this can be more visible I have two presets from the Dance category, so they go well together And just like this you can create a really long sequences Consisting of how many aniBlocks as you want For me it would be these three dance ones One of the main problems that you meet, when working with aniBlocks is there is no way to change the animation Meaning that even though they consist of a number of keyframes There seems to be no way to change these keyframes and alter the animation But in reality there is and a simple one All you need to do is right click anywhere in the aniMate Lite Except the timeline, because here you can see that these options appear And we need these ones So right click anywhere on the grey area that is not a timeline Of these options right now we are interested in the Bake To Studio Keyframes A warning would appear that explains what would happen Just click Yes Seems as if nothing did happen But if we go to the Timeline window, we will see that there is a lot of keys added there These keys if what we had as aniBlocks a moment ago So if I press play, it would play the same animations as it did before Same dance moves Also important to note that the length of animation was adjusted automatically You can see that the Total amount of frames is 265 When the default value is only 30 It was changed automatically in the transfer process The fact that we transferred out animation into Studio Keyframes allows us to change an animation You see that I can select a keyframe and delete it, for example Or add new ones too Let’s do exactly that For this I will need to find some bone that does not have keyframes yet Most of them do Here we found a bunch that don’t have Face rig, eyes, teeth I will change the jaw bone Right now it is closed So I will move the playhead a bit And change rotation of the jaw You can see that the jaw is now open Will add another keyframe with the closed mouth And a couple more keys Now my character constantly opens and closes the mouth while dancing Looks silly, but that is not the purpose One of the best things about all this is that as easily as we transferred aniBlock into keyframes It is also that easy to turn them back For this we need to go back into the aniMate And again right click anywhere on the grey area Just this time choose Create aniBlock From Studio Keyframes A window will appear with settings about this transition I did not change morphs or scaling, so will leave everything as default This created an unnamed aniBlock at the start of my animation We can see that it's the exact same animation that we had as keyframes Even the jaw movement is now there Previous aniBlocks don’t work, because they are transferred to the Timeline But we don’t need them anymore anyway, so I will delete them As we now have the same animation but edited To help you develop your experience with aniBlocks, I recommend visiting Daz3D.com/shop Here you can find a lot of different products to help you The best and most important example is of course aniMate2 If you like working with aniBlocks and animating in Daz Studio overall - it is a must have It proposes a lot more than aniMate Lite and allows you to create animations even easier than before Alternatively you can get an aniMate 2 Content Bundle The great deal here is that it is a bundle of several products for aniMate2 It includes different animation packs But most importantly, it has an aniMate2 trial So if you don’t have an aniMate 2 yet, you can get this product and receive a trial in a bundle with a bunch of animations If you already have an aniMate2, then you can have a look at other animation bundles that include aniBlocks Such as Genesis 8 Bundle Expressions & Face aniBlocks It is a pack of a lot of most different animation for your characters faces Which is amazing, because there are no such aniBlocks built-in the Daz Studio from the start And if you are feeling really into animation, then you may want to have a look at the Mega Animation Bundle by the Daz Originals Because this is truly a huge bundle that consists of 11 products Each of them in turn contain a number of animations So in the end you will have a really great deal with an astounding number of great animation presets If you want to learn more about Daz Studio and 3D design overall - visit our website, RenderGuide.com There you can find such articles as Daz Studio Animation Tutorial: Step by Step That introduces you into the world of animation in Daz Studio and talks even more about aniBlocks and aniMate Also there you can find an article on which this video is based on If you want to know more about current topic Don't forget to subscribe to our channel to get more inspiration
