random switching?

quatto · Post by **quatto** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:43 am

hey i was wondering if there's a trick to make a switch layer just switch randomly... reason being i dont want to go to the trouble of having to remember to make my characters eyelids blink all the time when it really (for the most part) doesn't have to be in sync with anything. i have enough trouble just trying to remember to get my own eyelids to blink after i've been staring at the computer screen for eight or nine hours.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:58 am

No. No random switch. I thought maybe a "noisy" interpolation on a switch but that doesn't work.

This could be "scripted" but for now you will have to do it by hand OR set up a looping cycle that runs through the whole animation.

Just create that first blink cycle (including NOT blinking) and set the last key frame of that cycle to go back to the first part of that cycle. This will then make the blink repeat over and over through out the animation until you key the switch layer again.. I think blinks are about every 3 seconds? Maybe more? If the pattern is too "regular" you could make the cycle longer and have some variations.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:52 am

Don't do that, please.

Eye blinks tell as much story as the rest of the body. Don't waste that dimension by making it automatically.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:15 pm

i remember there was a random switch script somewhere.
i'll search.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:17 pm

ok, here is it
viewtopic.php?t=2356

i hope it still working.

rylleman · Post by **rylleman** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:55 pm

selgin wrote:...
i hope it still working.

It is. But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to use it for blinking...

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:02 pm

rylleman wrote:It is. But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to use it for blinking...

yeah, but however it's good to remember which scripts have been wrote so far.
(anyway, thank for your script, i will download them when i were in mi pc)

i don't think it's a good idea either. blinking is not so random as you can believe. there are a lot of emotion you can do just blinking,

quatto · Post by **quatto** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 7:42 pm

thanks for the script, i'm gonna give it a try. I am aware that blinking can be used to convey emotioion and expression, but if quality were job #1, i'd prolly be doing frame-by-frame instead of bone-based. Basically, what i'm going for with this project is more Williams Street than Don Bluth.

I'm putting together an animated series with limited resources, so anything i can use to reduce the time i spend on the tedious details is a boon. Think of it like this: in a twelve minute short, a character blinks about 240 times. with at least two characters on screen, that's gonna be over an hour of work to manually insert. If the random switching works even a little, i'll use it to lay down the filler, then go through and tweak it. Same concept as using fan bones, they keep my shoulders and elbows from going all cuckoo, but i still have to go in and manually tweak them sometimes.

in summary, i know it will look like poo, but i'm trying to tell stories, not create a visual orgy.[/i]

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:52 pm

If that script doesn't work for you it's a trivial matter to write something that will generate the file you need (as a .DAT file) in almost anything (Excel, VB, even batch DOS).

temujin143 · Post by **temujin143** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 3:45 am

quatto wrote: in summary, i know it will look like poo, but i'm trying to tell stories, not create a visual orgy

Just an opinion which you can just ignore of course.

Marketing people usual work hard to make very attractive graphic advertisements to make sure people passing by would stop and take a look at what they offer.

I believe it's the same with animated stories. A good visual would atleast ensure that people would stop and perhaps they would listen through the whole story.

That's just my opinion

quatto · Post by **quatto** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 12:09 am

don't misunderstand me, temujin: I agree that if i weren't trying to convey a certain visual aesthetic then using animation instead of live action would be pretty pointless. I think catching the average person's attention has more to do with color and line and overall composition, and less with a subtle nuance like the timing of eye blinks.

I think the fact that this discussion is taking place on a bone-based animation program website and not on the Corel Painter website, most people here would agree that automating tasks doesn't necessarily make your product inferior.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 12:28 am

If you want to get REALLY crazy, Pixar "offsets" each eye blink, the left and the right, by like a frame to make it not so mechanical looking I guess.

-vern

quatto · Post by **quatto** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 12:50 am

in the past i've used a similar trick: both eyes close in unison, but open slightly out of sync.

cableon · Post by **cableon** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:31 pm

Would there by chance be a way to set a switch layer's own frame rate, other than moving every keyframe one by one in its sublayers ?

That is, for instance, in a project set to 12fps, have a switch layer displaying images at 7fps ?

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:39 pm

Currently the only way to do that would be to calculate the position of frames at 12fps that would be 7fps and put keys in the switch. According to my calculations the closest you could get to that would be every 2 frames. The exact number should be every 1.71 frames (12 fps / 7 fps).. but that's impossible.

-vern