pencil tool handwriting use

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zoesan
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pencil tool handwriting use

Post by zoesan »

I'm working on animating handwriting and using the pencil tool, the text I'm covering is six short lines long, and without Wacom using mouse, following the text results in deselection sometimes, and with the process of covering the letters its not always possible to know where I left off last, is there a feature like the point selection tool whereby with the pencil tool, you can cover a point and selection point changes colour as with auto-weld on, so as to result in continuous joined flow, a technique may be.
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zoesan
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by zoesan »

Worked out the pencil tool just need to go in with greater magnification, and use the auto weld tool after you've found the point where last left off.
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slowtiger
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by slowtiger »

I wouldn't do it this way, much too time consuming.
What I do: write that text (on paper & scan, or in Photoshop), import as images, create a mask layer, animate the points to reveal as much text as I want. The resulting movement is so fast, nobody will notice the clean cut-off of the line - or I maybe even add an animated quill or pencil on top of this.
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zoesan
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by zoesan »

Thanks Slowtiger, your right it is a very slow process, so will give your working method a go, like you said the mask moves so fast will be much the same as my current method. Will be interesting to see how the character 'g' is tackled though, as 'leading' i.e. distance between lines of type six in my case could be problematic, will give it a go.
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zoesan
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by zoesan »

Works regardless of ascenders or descenders in text.
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Greenlaw
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by Greenlaw »

Here's another technique:

You can use Stroke Exposure in Moho to 'write on' your text animation. Just write the text as normal using the freehand tool, and then key frame the stroke exposure for each segment you create. For example, in the following animation, there are only two key frames for each of the two strokes:

Image

(Okay, actually there are three keys for the second stroke but that's because I accidentally broke the stroke in mid-writing. The point is, it COULD be only two key frames.) :P

Anyway, this method can be simpler to animate and more natural looking for cursive text. However, this method can also get complicated if your text has many words or many disconnected letters (as in hand printed text.)

For long text, SlowTiger's method is probably more practical.
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hayasidist
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by hayasidist »

Greenlaw wrote:You can use Stroke Exposure in Moho to 'write on' your text animation. Just write the text as normal using the freehand tool, and then key frame the stroke exposure for each segment you create
in scripts/draw there's an LM_ "animated strokes" script which may take some of the pain away -

EDIT: I was wrong about how it does the timing of individual paths so wrong info deleted --> in one layer it shares out the time you specify amongst the selected curves.
Last edited by hayasidist on Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Greenlaw
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by Greenlaw »

That sounds cool! I'll check that out later. Thanks for the tip! :)
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by slowtiger »

I've done some projects which included this kind of "live handwriting". Each time I started animating the writing very exact, only to end up throwing away 3/4 of the keys and speed up the whole process a lot. Why? Because nobody wants to watch it for any longer time! Even revealing a complete letter each frame is still too slow.

So, unless you need to show writing in real time as a story point, do yourself and the audience a favour and make it quick.
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by Víctor Paredes »

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zoesan
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Re: pencil tool handwriting use

Post by zoesan »

Thanks Victor and fellow animators, use of text both in print and moving image is an important subject, the use of the script does open some interesting possibilities. Can the script be downloaded for earlier versions.
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