Frame by Frame idea - Step interpolation + Drawing tools

[cheyne]

Hi everyone.

Just a quick idea on using AS for FBF. I gave it a quick demo and basically it's not perfect by any stretch, but thought I'd throw it out there. I did a search through the forums and I can't see anyone has suggested something like this that doesn't involve a script of some sort.

So I always thought to get FBF you would simply set the current projects' default interpolation to "Step" and uncheck "Drawing tools enabled on frame 0 only" so you could draw on each frame, ala FBF.

I did a simple test with a moving box, nothing elegant or interesting just a boring old box.

So process was:

1. Draw in frame.
2. Go to next frame, draw next movement, drag previous frames drawing outside of viewing area.
3. Rinse and repeat.

Time consuming yes, but that's what FBF is anyway . Issue here of course it that for a simple object it works OK, but if you are drawing characters you'd almost definitely want to use the Onion Skin - this will end up in many layers for making sense of your project (Layer 1 would be named "frame 1", *shudder*) because of the way AS "remembers" points and images in the project. This may prove to have no benefit over using another piece of software that is made to use FBF, although what I've seen with ToonBoom and others it may be no difference in managing the project, just a hassle to drag images out of viewing area non-stop rather then the next frame being a blank canvas.

I can't think of anyway other way to use FBF without a fancy script or anything. Any ideas on how Onion Skinning might work with the above? I guess you'd just wait to drag the previous frame out of shot when you've drawn your next frame - this sounds way too complicated in my head, I guess I'll have to attempt it in principle.

I know files will get huge, having so many extra images in the project - but you can always get around that with breaking projects up into scenes, or breakdowns of scenes.

Let me know what you think

[hayasidist]

what about ...

(idea based on the technique shamelessly ripped from Richard William's ASK - see p46 et seq of the first edition in the chapter that RW calls "Advancing Backwards to 1940" ).

On your sketchpad.

> design your layout
> sketch your Keys
> plan to segement the artwork into parts that will need to be animated (i.e. moved / distorted not just by simple translation in the XY plane - or XZ / YZ if multiplane) and those that will not. (e.g you could draw the body of a car on a "static" layer and the wheels in an animated layer (or 2 or ..); or the whole car in an animated layer..)
> plan which items are in front of which
> plan the timing between Keys
> plan your Dope sheet

On frame zero in AS
> draw the static stuff on separate (aligned) layers according to visual order. (and set Z for multiplane if you're planning to use that)
> draw the "Keys" of moving stuff on one layer per key
> draw the "extremes" of moving stuff on separate layers
> draw the "breakdown / passing position" on separate layers
> do the tweens and twiddly bits on separate layers (for 1s or 2s)

as you go label the layers by what they are (e.g. BG, Cat, Car, Wheels... ) and target frame number. If you don't know frame number yet then (here I diverge from ASK) go up in 10s. Add leading zeros - it'll make life easier... So a cat as would appear on frame 90 or thereabouts would be in a layer named Cat0900. (because the cat you draw for frame 89 might actually need to go at 88 with an extra tween ... this way you get 0890 0895 0900 rather than 89 89a 90...)

if you have a looping action (e.g. walk cycle) where the cat takes a few steps of 25 frames cycle starting at frame 5 then those are labelled Cat0050, Cat0060, etc (if you're animating in 1s; or animate in 2s or ...) To save effort duplicate layers and shift points around.

on your Dope sheet in the Cat column you then have at frame 5 ... 25 Cat0050 ... Cat0250 then at frame 26 Cat0050 etc ... until at frame 90 Cat0900 (the ASK recommends highlighting at each such sequence breaks..)

Gather all the Cat layers into a switch labelled Cat etc ...

Gather all the switch and static layers into a group if necessary (you might want to change layer order or use masking or ...) as per the dope sheet order.

Scatter the switch keyframes along the time line as needed.

use fbf step interpolation on layer translation / camera movement as necessary. (if you only have one walking character it *might* be easier to have them walk on the spot and everything else translate around them).

thoughts?

[cheyne]

I see where you are going - using switch layers for FBF was the obvious solution that has been brought up in the past in other discussions, and that's the way I figured FBF would be utilised in AS. If you were going to do that, you may as well just draw all your frames and dump them in a switch and well, use the switch layers. Animation is hard work, but staring at all those labelled layers, sheesh! Makes my head hurt thinking about it

When I thought on it, I figured a FBF solution using Step interpolation as default and a combination of the drawings tools enabled beyond frame 0, would be the logical solution - but then I recalled how AS "remembers" every image drawn, regardless if it's on frame 0 or not. Hence my "draw one frame, draw the next, drag previous of shot". Not an elegant solution, but thought it could be worth giving a go.

Of course with multiple layers you could just hide images on certain frames and not have to diddle around with dragging frames off screen.

Anyhoo - I am still in learning/practice mode but wanted to bring up this discussion

[hayasidist]

whatever the approach, with fbf you're going to end up with the electronic equivalent of a truck-load of cels. A min of 12 (assuming you're on 2s) and max - well ... "huge" - per second. Re-use by such as looping cuts that down of course in the longer runs. Bigger-than-output-area stills for pan / zoom helps too as, of course, does the "minimalist" approach where only "essential" animation takes place and everything else stays still until it has to move ...

You could merge all the layers for one frame into one and use shape stacking to cut down on the volume of stuff (= "all those numbers") on the dope sheet - but that won't change the amount of info and will probably make it harder to do the tweening. or hand draw every cel from scratch ... or any combination thereof..


the reason I got into AS was that I was doing fbf using gigabytes of jpegs / pngs all hand crafted in photoshop and similar, then carefully strung together in premiere. It was ... er ... struggles for polite words ... a labour of love .

if I need a "quick bit of fbf" (and, yes I admit that sometimes I do end up keyframing on 1s in AS - but that's also sometimes because I've messed up on the extremes and can't figure out how to shift the bones around to put things right ) for me the advantage of AS over, say, photoshop, is vectors - I find it a whole lot easier to move an arm by shoving points around rather than cutting and pasting and painting pixels. But most of the time I stick to letting AS do all the tweening for me. Now all I have to do is I learn to draw properly ... and when I do ...... heyyyyy.

but bottom line, as has been said in this forum more than a few times, is that AS isn't really designed for fbf .. but such as viewtopic.php?t=19240 proves just how versatile AS can be when used inventively for blending techniques ..

IMHO, it's down to how you use the tools you have - somethimes it's just plain wrong (egg whisk to drive a nail in ...) but that doesn't mean the inverse is (hammer to scramble an egg.. )

[Víctor Paredes]

Check here
viewtopic.php?t=13853
In this post there is an script which automatically change your keyframes to step and scale all the draw of each frame to a little invisible point. It's similar to your idea.

[cheyne]

Thanks Selgin, I was reading that post when I started writing this

I was just thinking of a way to do this bare bones AS, but this makes it a lot easier in work flow. So essentially this does what I was talking about, with having to drag stuff off screen manually.

So if it makes the previous frames drawing "invisible", is all of the point data still there? As in, will it reduce CPU load on the application or make file size smaller?

[funksmaname]

bare bones, you could use switch layers with a layer for each drawing - although tbh, I don't think AS' drawing tools nearly consistant enough to fbf anything more than 'special effects' like a quick poof of smoke or splashing water.

for roughing, using PAP for free and then importing the single frames into AS (only the drawn ones, not one on every frame) is a good workflow, made easier with a script from Synthsin on the other forum that actually imports image sequnces and places them on the timeline for you...

if polished FBF is your goal, AS just isn't the tool - get TVPaint or ToobBoom

[cheyne]

Thanks Funk - I've been a bit quiet on the forums and had thought about this process in the past and just wanted to get active on the site again with some discussion.

Polished FBF - hell no, haha, I don't have the time nor passion for it. I'm all about telling a story