playback speed from timeline

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:56 pm

Hi all. I see that this question has been brought up various times in the past, but most of the threads were old and I guess I wanted to see if there was any new info.

So, simply put, I have to leave the "allow frame skipping" option or my animations play back super slow from the timeline. If any of you saw my walk cycle thread, then you'll understand this makes it that much harder to perfect a walk cycle since I have to export a QT file to see how it "really" looks.

Just now, I tried creating a new, empty project, and importing only the character/bone layer with the walk action, and playing back the action in the project. HOOAH! Big difference. Much smoother, even with frame skipping allowed. I also made this new project 300x300, where as my original was 960 x 480. So I guess having a lot of layers in the project, even if they're invisible and not moving at a given point, still slows it down? Does the resolution actually affect anything until you render (if you're only working with vectors that is)? If I change my original project to 300x300, and then change it back to 960x480 when I'm ready to animate FOR REALZ, will that cause any issues?

Any additional tips on improving playback? I'm on an iMac, 2.4 Ghz, 3GB RAM running Leopard.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 7:05 pm

Layers certainly slow down a project. Typically my characters all have around 175 layers and I can use three characters in a project before I have problems with playback. The fourth will definitely start to show difficulties, and animating with more than four is a definite challenge (one reason I'm simplifying my characters to reduce them by about 50 layers -- I figure this will give me at least four characters with no problems :>)

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 7:07 pm

Wow. My characters definitely don't have that many layers, though they do have quite a few. And only a very few scenes in the project will have more than three people at one time.

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:09 pm

Are you characters all vector? And how complicated are the layers themselves?

Working with bitmaps definitely slows things down (I have no bitmaps anywhere, even in backgrounds). And my character layers are pretty simplistic -- probably not more than five or six shapes at the most. I assume that more complicated layers will also slow things down.

Otherwise you shouldn't have a problem with playback -- if you want to post a sample file I and others can test it and see how it plays on our own machines.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:26 pm

All vector.

Yes, I went against some of the advice on here (oh well) and have some fairly complicated designs on some of the characters, while others are pretty simple.

I consider the one I am using to tweak the walk cycle (with the hope of copying it to everyone else) to be pretty simple. . .He's in a solid color tshirt, solid color jeans, bicolor shoes.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:22 pm

I find that BONES slow things down hectically. You have a good system. Even with vectors. I find that that with BITMAPS things run pretty smooth, but with BONES in the mix, SLOWDOWN. I think the program has to compute quite a lot of stuff to figure out what the bones do. That's just me theory. I can do pretty quick stuff with loads of bitmaps as long as there's no bones though.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:25 pm

Well, that's too bad. . .

Considering the bones system is what sold me on getting the program!

mkelley · Post by **mkelley** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:52 pm

Maybe it depends on your bones setup. Mine uses 35 bones for each character and, as I said, I can have up to three characters in a scene without any slowdown. Four things start to get "skippy" and more than that is a real problem.

Now, my bones control very optimized characters (vectors I've hand drawn to make sure they have an optimum number -- you really don't need more than ten or twelve vertices per object layer even on a very detailed object as long as you know what you are doing). Certainly the use of the freehand tools is at a minimum (it can generate LOTS of unnecessary vertices) and I don't import anything from any other program.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 8:54 pm

Yes, mine are all vector based.

No free hand tool. I "sculpt" the body parts. . .make rectangle, add points, bend and squeeze, bam, there's your torso! I may have more points than I need on some parts, but it's not insane.

Bones. . .

2 in the feet, one for shin, one for thigh, root bone in pelvis, two or three more for the torso, one for neck, one for head, one for upper arm, one for lower arm, a hand root bone, and two for each finger.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:48 am

Hmm...come to think of it I'm using lots of bones with vector and I'm not getting slowdown. Back in 2006 when I had loads of PNG's and was using a slow Windows computer I used to get slowdown. Maybe you could post the file and let the resident gurus have a look. I agree the bone system is one of AS's strong points

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:31 pm

I appreciate it, but I think it's down to having a whole buttload of characters/bone layers in the same project. In the actual scenes in the "film", there will never be more than 5 at once, but in the project where I built them all, there are now upwards of ten. When I started a new empty project and just brought one bone layer in and did playback, it worked fine. So I will continue to build the characters in that same project, and when time to animate, start new projects as needed, I think. That would seem to be the solution.

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:50 pm

Yeah that would slow things down a lot. I think it's best to keep each character in its own file, and just import all the ones you need for each scene.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:59 pm

what synth said. OR build your characters without bones if there are so many. For one or two characters it'd probably run smoothly.

basshole · Post by **basshole** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 7:28 pm

Thanks. I wish I'd known that earlier. It's just as well they're all in the same project though. . .with all the glitches I find, and the fact they all have copies of certain layers (eyes, mouths), it's much easier to fix something, than copy/paste it to all the different characters when they're consolidated like that. Plus, to keep their sizes consistent, I line them up with each other and use "rulers" to make sure everything matches.