Hoptoad's Animation Tests

[Hoptoad]

Elsewhere in the forum, synthsin75 linked to a Moho file they'd made of a 3D ceiling fan (blades only).

My animation project could use a ceiling fan. So I rotoscoped over the fan blades and added a motor, etc.

The animation is point animation with some animated shape order.



Thanks for the posting the fan, synthsin75.

[Edit: Changed titled from "Ceiling Fan" to "Hoptoad's Animation Tests", after I had decided to add another animation test to this thread rather than starting a new thread.]

[synthsin75]

Good results, but you could have rotoscoped video of a ceiling fan just as easily.

The file I posted ( http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... 23#p197123 ) took all of 2 minutes to throw together and could have easily had the other parts added to it, saving a lot of work. But I'm sure rotoscoping was good practice.

[Hoptoad]

Two minutes? Holy cow, that's inhumanly fast. I have a cool idea for an feature-length film. Maybe you could animate the whole thing over the weekend and get started on the sequel.

[synthsin75]

I just already knew how to easily do stuff like that in Moho. That definitely doesn't translate to all animating.

[Hoptoad]

Ha ha, I was kidding. Everybody knows a feature-length film takes at least a week.

I looked at your file and couldn't make heads or tails of it. It amazes me that Moho can do so many things in addition to bones, in-betweens, etc. I had no idea it was even possible to do what you did with 3D fan blades, or that it could be done quickly.

[synthsin75]

To be fair, a feature length animation takes at least a week and a half.

Yeah, the 3D space and 3D vectors in Moho allow for a ton of possibilities. I would hate to animate something like a ceiling fan in 2D.

In the file I just:
1. Drew a fan blade, made it a 3D extruded vector, and duplicated it three times.
2. Rotated the duplicate layers about the layer origin to place them around.
3. Put these in a group, rotated the group 90˚ and translated it toward the ceiling.
4. Rotated each blade layer 20˚ (some negative 20˚ and some on the y-axis, so they all slant the same way).
5. Animated the rotation of the group layer.

Pretty easy once you've done it a few times.

[Hoptoad]

Following your steps, I made a 3D fan. It was startling watching it suddenly work.

My fan blades are as thick as bricks, though.

Also, I couldn't get the fan blades to tilt. Despite those oddities, it still looks pretty cool.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1klkgsd0vjvik ... .moho?dl=0

[synthsin75]

I made mine with the blades extruding to top and bottom, but you could just narrow your vector rectangles to make them thinner. Extruding top and bottom allows you to have more complex blade shapes.
The blades just have to be Rotate Layer XY:
Layer 1 = Y 70
Layer 2 = X 70
Layer 3 = Y -70
Layer 4 = X -70

http://www.filedropper.com/3dfantestedit

[Hoptoad]

Thanks for your help. I got it working.

I was misunderstanding what "extruding" did to a shape, hence the thick fan blades, and I had been trying to rotate the fan blades with the Transform Layer tool instead of the Rotate Layer XY tool. But it looks great now.

I showed my daughter the 3D fan and she said, "Cool! Is that real 3D or fake 3D?" And I said, "It's real 3D. Moho is doing all the math with the angles and whatever." And she said, "Oh! Now you can make a Minecraft character!" Ha ha.

[synthsin75]

And she said, "Oh! Now you can make a Minecraft character!" Ha ha.

Technically true. Just not as easy to animate in 3D.

[Hoptoad]

I made several creatures, then I made three paths with the Follow Path tool. Then I had several creatures follow each path.

I made some of the creatures move at different speeds, to better conceal the "group" aspect of their path-following.

[Hoptoad]

Walk cycle test.

[Hoptoad]

Various changes to the previous version. Also, a hat.

The body no longer leans forward, and I got rid of the head-bob.

I also fixed the ups and downs, which were not correct. Generally, the passing position should not be the "up" and the contact position should not be the "down".

The arm swing could be a little better, I guess.

[Hoptoad]

One bubble gets bigger until it pops.

Note that the color of the bubble is animated; it gets lighter in color as it grows.

[Hoptoad]

One bubble, duplicated several times. Keyframes were slid back and forth in the timeline to keep the bubbles from all popping at the same time.