Newbie... questions!

[HappyCat]

Hi Forum members!

I have just started using Anime Studio 10 Pro. What a wonderful piece of software!
I have only done a few animations but there are some things, probably obvious to you veterans, that puzzle me.

1. How do I make a looping video of a 150 frame animation? Cannot find it online or in the tutorials I have found...
2. Which is the less consuming way of making characters move? I have used smartbones but then I have to draw each scene out manually. For something small that is not a problem, but anything of substantial length will take heaps of time. So, I also used bones, but the distortion with the components of the drawn character is puzzling to me. So which is most commonly used?
3. Just in general I find the order of doing things to be quite important and not always clear in tutorials.

I would love to find somebody in my region to help me with this. So... does anybody know of people living in the Toronto area that maybe do tutoring or have group meetings? I am in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, and I think I could do with some personal training sessions. Of course, this can be done online as well through a screen share.

Any suggestions on where to turn to speed up the learning process?

Much obliged!!

Nicky

[HappyCat]

Almost forgot: I have also discovered smart bone dials. I think they are really handy but again, do something in the wrong order and you have to undo or even just start from scratch...

[synthsin75]

1. No such thing as a looping video. Looping a video relies on the video player used to view it. If you're talking about an animated gif (which do normally loop), that is an image file, not a video.

2. Do all of the tutorials in the menu Help>Tutorials... Especially all the binding and flexi-binding bone tutorials. You should be very familiar with these before worrying about smart bones. No idea why you'd have to "draw each scene out manually" other than creating the assets.

3. Depends on the task.

Smart bones cannot be reparented without having to reset the SB action bone rotations, as they are now rotating relative to the new parent, or lack of parent, and the keyframed values will not typically be where you has them before reparenting.

[HappyCat]

Thank you for your input, synthsin75.

About looping videos: what I have been doing is play with the software by creating a sleeping cat that breathes deeply. It is only 200 frames but I would like the breathing to go on for a long time. I guess I would use something like Premiere Pro by Adobe to set it to loop indefinitely. Right?

I am working through the tutorials, have done the long one with the green monster but did not find it totally intuitive. But will plod on.

Again: I would like to find a personal tutor or trainer in my area. I would be interested in buying their services for a couple of sessions.

[hayasidist]

like synthsin75 says - it depends what you want to do with the cat!

for example, it's on a sofa and that whole scene a background element in something where the main action is going on in front of it... so you'll have animated the action (say 700 frames) - which you then export with a transparent background (e.g. use PNG sequence or QuickTime using the PNG codec with milllions of colours+ <<< NB the "+") and ... Premiere: import the cat and add it to the timeline 4 times ... choose whether to trim the start of the first and/or the end of the last "background cat" and then import the action as another video channel "above" it.

or it's the whole action: same again for as long as you want, but only one video channel

or it's the foreground with action behind it -- then you'll need the cat exported with transparency - but then it's the same except the action is on a video channel "below" the cat

or it's the whole action looping on an HTML page ... which might mean exporting as SWF

or you can loop the action in AS - which, if there are not too many different channels involved, might be a better answer - check out the "interpolate / cycle" options.

[HappyCat]

OK, now I am confused.

Let me try to describe what I want to do. I run into different things.
I think I know the basics now of how to apply bones and movements, smart dials, I know how to bind points to a bone. Flexibinding: I think what is meant to happen with that.

However... there is little stuff that really stumps me.

1 Position of the drawing
The cat is lying still, just breathing and moving a little bit as if in a dream.
I have finished the cat, but... then think that I want it to go lower onto the work area, because I want to add more animation in a "think cloud" so that I can show what it is dreaming about. When I try to move the whole layer, I get into a conflict with the cross that signifies the origin. I just do not understand what this cross means. I can move the whole cat but a line is shown from the origin and in my animation the cat suddenly starts floating away. This happens even if I reset the origin cross first and then move the layer. How does one work with this cross? I have argued with it before but now it is really getting in my way

2. Movement of limbs
I have the cat lying, seen from the side, with her front paws in front of her nose, in the way cats tend to sleep.
At the end of my short animation I make it wake up and stretch. However... the legs in their original shape do not really allow for this change.
So, one of the tutorials describes visibility of layers. So I think I am smart and I create a new layer and do the stretching out of the limbs in its own layers. It worked after a lot of puzzling actions, amongst which the distortion of the new layers even though I cannot see any connection between them and the other layers. I have no bone strengths and the arrow that connect bones are all in the right places as well. So I am stumped.

I worked with visibility and I have managed to get the animation movement, but it is not really smooth. What is the best way to animate a motion like that?

3. Which line with keyframes applies to which layer?
I am also confused when I go back to an initial animation that has parts that I like and I now want to add to it.

Here was my work flow:

- First try: draw the cat. First tried doing it all in one layer and then just adjust drawing and make keyframe. Did not work well, it was OK for the breathing but not for anything to do with limbs or other features.
- Second try: Draw the cat and put each component in its own layer and give it bones. Move bones and create keyframes for motion. Works well. Added some smart dials for the opening of the eyes with a masked layer as I saw in a tutorial and this works well too.
- Now I decide that I want to include the tail in the stretching motion. I use the bones to stretch it out all the way in the back of the animation with a keyframe of its own. But when I then play the animation back, it turns out that the animation still moves the tail. How can I get rid of this unwanted movement? What I am overlooking?

Lots of questions that are about annoying issues I run into as I go.

Maybe I should try and set up a meetup group for training in the Ontario (Canadian) area. Have not found one as of yet so all forum input is very much appreciated. If you want an example file, let me know, so I can send it. It's just a beginner's project but I would appreciate assistance.

Muchos Gracias!
Nicky

[HappyCat]

hayasidist, thanks for the input.
I have for now let go the idea of looping, since I want to add a dream to the cat while it lies there and sleeps. I did see the cycle options, but did not really find out how to apply in such a ways that the exported video will loop. So I think that this is something that I would typically do in Premiere Pro, that does have the endless loop option.

But now that I have the idea about the dream, I won't need it to go on forever.

Nicky

[heyvern]

hayasidist, thanks for the input.
I have for now let go the idea of looping, since I want to add a dream to the cat while it lies there and sleeps. I did see the cycle options, but did not really find out how to apply in such a ways that the exported video will loop. So I think that this is something that I would typically do in Premiere Pro, that does have the endless loop option.

But now that I have the idea about the dream, I won't need it to go on forever.

Nicky

You can loop inside Anime Studio BEFORE rendering. A cycle key frame works by going back a set number of frames over and over until a new key frame is hit. If you want an action, like the cat breathing, to "loop" then you create that action (whichever way you choose, bones or points etc) and set those keys to cycle a set number of frames back. Until a NEW key is placed on the time line that action will repeat continuously. To make it stop you add a new key frame that isn't a cycle key. You don't have to use premiere or other software to do simple looping. This can be done in Anime Studio.

As for your other issues involving character rigging, like the cat stretching, and moving layers etc, I think you are trying to do more with the software than you know how to do at this time. Those things can be done in many different ways, with bones, or point motion, but you need to learn the tools first. Start with something simple and work your way up. Study the characters that come with Anime Studio to see how they are set up. Many of the files included have animations built in so you can learn from them.

[hayasidist]

@HappyCat: given what you're planning, it doesn't seems to be that the whole set of cat movements all loop together - or, rather, it will look odd if they do. Think about breaking it down into 4 sets: breathing; paw stretching; tail waving; head twitching -- you can have these on different loops (use AS "cycle" interp for these) - (e.g.) breathing at 7 seconds; paw stretching at 11 seconds; tail waving at 8 seconds; head movements at 5 seconds.

But ... if the main action is the dream, you'll probably want to sync the dreamer's motion to the action in the dream... and exactly how you do that will depend on things such as: is the dream comedy or drama? you use the dreamer's movements to accent things in the dream to gain efffect.

the message here is: planning. do a storyboard, even if it's in your head (better on paper tho'), before you start drawing and animating. Know "in outline" what the camera is going to do and what the action will be.

to try to answer a couple of your questions:

1: you've moved the cat at other than frame 0. so there'll be a layer translation keyframe; the blue line shows the path the layer takes to get from its frame 0 position to where you've moved it. the cat WILL float away. to stop the float, on frame 0 move the cat to where you want it and then delete the layer movement keys.

2: draw on frame 0 to make rigging easy; don't draw "the starting position" on frame 0. Move the limbs on frame 1 to the starting position.

3: the black lines for (say) bone rotation show that there are bones being rotated. If you have a bone layer selected and a bone selected the red lines show the keys for that bone.

hope that helps!

[HappyCat]

Thanks for that input, all who reacted. This helpful! And yes, I should think of actions before I want to draw them.
I guess enthusiasm drove me and now it is back to the drawing board! It is fun, though!

I will be back....

Nicky