Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animation.

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drumlug13
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Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animation.

Post by drumlug13 »

What does everybody do to keep everything lightweight and easy for the software and computers to animate a scene. When it comes to multiple characters and/or complex scenery the lag can get frustrating.

Like...

- The fewer points the better
- Import a PNG of the scene for the background
- etc.

One thing I've found that will "lighten" up a scene or character is to create one shape out of multiple shapes (that have the same color or style).

For example, I made a brick wall with about 200 bricks, each their own individual shape. When you preview-render it takes about 15 to twenty seconds for the software to finish rendering the one frame. (The file size is 217 kb)

Then I made the same brick wall, but this time the 200 individual bricks were created as one shape. (create all the bricks > select all with Create Shape tool > Enter). Now when you preview-render it takes less than 1 second, all 200 brick render at the same time. (and the file size is 153 kb)
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drumlug13
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by drumlug13 »

My nagging question of the day seems to be...

Bind Points vs. Layer Bind... is one way better than the other?

As far as rigging a streamlined character goes,is there a "best" way to bind artwork to a bone? Specifically in a situation where all the points will be bound to the same bone. I know we will get the same results with either the Layer Bind or Bind Points tools, but is one method less taxing on the computer when it comes time to actually animate the character?

Example: All mouth phoneme vector layers are in a switch layer. Is binding the points in each individual layer less taxing on the software than just layer binding the switch layer?


I'll spare everybody the sob story about animating multiple character scenes with a struggling computer. I'd love to hear any tips on creating lean character rigs. What do you do to keep them light?
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slowtiger
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by slowtiger »

If you create backgrounds in AS, I strongly suggest to render them as image and import it back into the scene before you start animation. (Have different files for BG creation and animation.)
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Víctor Paredes
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by Víctor Paredes »

drumlug13 wrote:As far as rigging a streamlined character goes,is there a "best" way to bind artwork to a bone? Specifically in a situation where all the points will be bound to the same bone. I know we will get the same results with either the Layer Bind or Bind Points tools, but is one method less taxing on the computer when it comes time to actually animate the character?

Example: All mouth phoneme vector layers are in a switch layer. Is binding the points in each individual layer less taxing on the software than just layer binding the switch layer?

I'll spare everybody the sob story about animating multiple character scenes with a struggling computer. I'd love to hear any tips on creating lean character rigs. What do you do to keep them light?
Actually, binding layer and binding points is very different.
I prefer to NEVER use the Bind layer tool, because using it you lose features as Smart Bones and Nested layer control. Also, to reset a bound layer back to normal behavior is harder than when you are using other binding methods.
I do all my rigs with a combination of point binding and the "Use selected bones for flexi-binding" menu item. If I want to "bind" a layer to a single bone, I select the layer, the single bone I want and the "Use selected bones..." menu item.

Now, in therms of speed, probably Bind the layer to a bone will make the process easier for the computer, but I don't know if it's technically different to using a single bone and the "Use selected bones..." menu item.
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karip
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by karip »

slowtiger wrote:If you create backgrounds in AS, I strongly suggest to render them as image and import it back into the scene before you start animation. (Have different files for BG creation and animation.)
I'm wondering, why is this important? If I would make all the backgrounds in AS, does the scene get too heavy to handle?

We have quite new iMacs, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB of memory.

Any advice on this?
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by slowtiger »

It is much easier for any software to just copy bits from a bitmap file (the image) than to evaluate the same bits from their position, colour, effect, and whatever you did to create that BG. That calculation needs to be done for each pixel and each shape on each layer, then there's to decide which elements cover others, or whether anything is being masked.
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Re: Tips for creating lightweight scenes for easier animatio

Post by karip »

Ok, I see, thanks for the clarification.

We'd better do a test scene and see how it effects on performance. If we run into trouble while animating, we'll know where to go. Thanks again Slowtiger.
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