I'm new to AS and animation, and have seen how to animate lyp sync of the mouth using Papagayo with AS.
What should I do if I want to get a character to dance to the music?
Specifically, I want certain body motions to be in time with the music. For example, the right foot hits the ground on the 1st and 3rd beat of each measure. I will have an audio wav file.
I'm guessing this involves lots of planning, the audio track gets imported,
and then pre-constructed charaters are manipulted by their bones.
What is the best way to plan movements to music? Do animators use a spreadsheet? I have an audio editing application, one idea is that I could record animation cues in a separate track which is used during animation design in AS.
I've got Murdock's "Official Guide" which is helping, but would like to hear any others users suggestions.
Make a character dance to the music
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
Most danceable music is going to be on a steady beat. The beat will be at the same spot on the time line.
The key to this type of animation would be to figure out that beat, either visually or just be ear, and then make sure all the keys fall on those spots. If you can get it a "click track" of the music could be loaded as a wav and used as a visual guide to the beat of the music.
Or you could somehow distort the music to emphasize the beat so that the beat in AS is clearly visible.
Everything else... the dancing bit... is going to have be the creativity part. I suppose you could use the bone wiggle or papagayo to activate actions... hey... there's an idea.
Set up a bunch of actions for the character, dance actions. name them after the phonemes in Papagayo or create custom ones. Load the "click" track in papagayo. line up the beat and export to a dat file.
You could even render out a set of "mouths' for papagayo that are actually dance actions. Then you can actually see which ones are being used.
Just brainstorming.
The key to this type of animation would be to figure out that beat, either visually or just be ear, and then make sure all the keys fall on those spots. If you can get it a "click track" of the music could be loaded as a wav and used as a visual guide to the beat of the music.
Or you could somehow distort the music to emphasize the beat so that the beat in AS is clearly visible.
Everything else... the dancing bit... is going to have be the creativity part. I suppose you could use the bone wiggle or papagayo to activate actions... hey... there's an idea.
Set up a bunch of actions for the character, dance actions. name them after the phonemes in Papagayo or create custom ones. Load the "click" track in papagayo. line up the beat and export to a dat file.
You could even render out a set of "mouths' for papagayo that are actually dance actions. Then you can actually see which ones are being used.
Just brainstorming.
Yeah, and always remember it's better to come early then late to the party.
IOW, most dance animations are about 2 frames *ahead* of the beat -- as always, you need to track this by eye (the accepted method is to animate on the beat and then slide your track as necessary). But never never never late (unless you're animating Jerry Lewis dancing).
The Animator's Survival guide has some great tips on dancing animation -- things like you don't need to animate to each beat of the measure, but only the first one, etc.
IOW, most dance animations are about 2 frames *ahead* of the beat -- as always, you need to track this by eye (the accepted method is to animate on the beat and then slide your track as necessary). But never never never late (unless you're animating Jerry Lewis dancing).
The Animator's Survival guide has some great tips on dancing animation -- things like you don't need to animate to each beat of the measure, but only the first one, etc.
Hi Vern,
I thought that Papagayo worked with switch lawyers - so a different image is swapped for a given layer - as opposed to actions.
Looking at the text .DAT file format produced by Papagayo, it looks very simple, number space and "nameOfLayer". But are you saying that such an imported text file could also be used to automate Actions? I've read how to import a .dat file into a switch layer. How do you import a .DAT file to invoke Actions?
I'm limited understanding of Actions is that they would enable much more elaborate motion than just using a switch layer.
I read your recent post about your new script allowing Anime Studio Pro the ability to swap actions from file to file, and possibly even from character to character. This would be great so once I got a motion down, another character could use it.
I thought that Papagayo worked with switch lawyers - so a different image is swapped for a given layer - as opposed to actions.
Looking at the text .DAT file format produced by Papagayo, it looks very simple, number space and "nameOfLayer". But are you saying that such an imported text file could also be used to automate Actions? I've read how to import a .dat file into a switch layer. How do you import a .DAT file to invoke Actions?
I'm limited understanding of Actions is that they would enable much more elaborate motion than just using a switch layer.
I read your recent post about your new script allowing Anime Studio Pro the ability to swap actions from file to file, and possibly even from character to character. This would be great so once I got a motion down, another character could use it.
heyvern wrote:Most danceable music is going to be on a steady beat. The beat will be at the same spot on the time line.
The key to this type of animation would be to figure out that beat, either visually or just be ear, and then make sure all the keys fall on those spots. If you can get it a "click track" of the music could be loaded as a wav and used as a visual guide to the beat of the music.
Or you could somehow distort the music to emphasize the beat so that the beat in AS is clearly visible.
Everything else... the dancing bit... is going to have be the creativity part. I suppose you could use the bone wiggle or papagayo to activate actions... hey... there's an idea.
Set up a bunch of actions for the character, dance actions. name them after the phonemes in Papagayo or create custom ones. Load the "click" track in papagayo. line up the beat and export to a dat file.
You could even render out a set of "mouths' for papagayo that are actually dance actions. Then you can actually see which ones are being used.
Just brainstorming.
Yes. My objective is satire, so artistic mastery will be less of a priority than the time involved, actually completing something.slowtiger wrote:I really recommend that you try and create some dance poses and movements first, before you step into switch layers or even actions. Those will do nothing for you if you didn't feed them with some material.
I've found FiziWig's tutorials and am going through his stuff now.
How about importing a file that is just one bar of the track, then make a bunch of cycling actions that go for the length of the bar.
Then bring in the complete track and lay down the first cycling action and when you need to, just drop in a new action when appropriate.
If the music changes tempo then it still shouldn't be too hard to get around.
You can also layer the actions (within reason on top of one another) so first do your foot tapping, then in another action the finger point and another for the head nod --- bitchin..
Then you can dub in an out those simple cycling actions to create elaborate combinations- as long as one action does not interfere with the other.
Your facial expressions can be independent to the actions so you can go to ' overbite' for a while and then do the ' hot chips' face at your discretionary leisure.
If you want to see the beat better in the timeline you could equalise the track to work to and reduce the frequencies that aren't beats - as vern suggests and pump up the ones that are, - isolate the kick, the snare and the hat, unsst unsst unsst.
When you are finished the put the original untreated music back in.
Then bring in the complete track and lay down the first cycling action and when you need to, just drop in a new action when appropriate.
If the music changes tempo then it still shouldn't be too hard to get around.
You can also layer the actions (within reason on top of one another) so first do your foot tapping, then in another action the finger point and another for the head nod --- bitchin..
Then you can dub in an out those simple cycling actions to create elaborate combinations- as long as one action does not interfere with the other.
Your facial expressions can be independent to the actions so you can go to ' overbite' for a while and then do the ' hot chips' face at your discretionary leisure.
If you want to see the beat better in the timeline you could equalise the track to work to and reduce the frequencies that aren't beats - as vern suggests and pump up the ones that are, - isolate the kick, the snare and the hat, unsst unsst unsst.
When you are finished the put the original untreated music back in.
I found a thread where a lot was discussed but it did not seem clear which script was the working/final version. If you come across a definite link that would be great.heyvern wrote:There is a menu script that loads the same dat files for switch layers but instead activates actions.
I have to track it down it again. It was created by Ramon Lopez. There is a link to the thread it's in in my scripting thread at the top of the scripting forum.
-vern
viewtopic.php?t=2424
All the way down at the bottom of the page. The last post. The word "Here" is linked. Right Click and save that link. Or if it opens in the browser save the page with .lua extension.
Put it in the scripts/menu folder or put it in the scripts/tool folder and make it a button.
-vern
All the way down at the bottom of the page. The last post. The word "Here" is linked. Right Click and save that link. Or if it opens in the browser save the page with .lua extension.
Put it in the scripts/menu folder or put it in the scripts/tool folder and make it a button.
-vern
Got it. Thanks Vern!heyvern wrote:viewtopic.php?t=2424
All the way down at the bottom of the page. The last post. The word "Here" is linked. Right Click and save that link. Or if it opens in the browser save the page with .lua extension.
Put it in the scripts/menu folder or put it in the scripts/tool folder and make it a button.
-vern