Animator/director Nick Cross (The Waif of Persephone, Yellow Cake) outlines his animation process, with lots of little video clips showing things as they progress. He's animating a new film called The Pig Farmer. A great, great blog post- especially for you guys who've never animated in 2d before. Those previous students of mine who adhere to the more 2d-centric way of animating in CG will find a lot of very familiar thinking and approaches.
Be sure to check out his other posts, he has one on his inking process in Flash, too.
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Squiggle Line Tutorial
It's been a while since I've had enough free time to do anything with my Otto & Schmitty characters. But some time back I posted a little snippet of a squiggle line test animation. Since I don't know when I'll have the time to pursue this idea further, I thought to myself- Gee, why not share how I did it and see if somebody else can do something cool with the technique? I really couldn't find a good reason not to, so here it is- a quick and dirty tutorial on how I came up with the toony 'boiling ink line' look in Maya.
First, animate your character. The trick- throw away all those fancy animated goodies you've fought so long and hard to learn how to do well. The secret to success in this approach is not technical fluidity and super fine detail work. Keep it simple. No Moving holds! Seriously. Lock those poses in flat. And don't worry too much about smooth f-curves or flowing motion. We're emulating a rougher style, remember? I found the less polished the curves the better the results. Oh, and I usually do this at 12 fps, not 24. So be sure to set your time settings appropriately. Here's a good example of what I mean.
And here's the f-curve editor just so you can see. There's nothing fancy in here at all. Just solid blocking basics, really. Poses, good breakdowns and maybe an ease if you think it's needed. Maybe.
Second, apply a non-realistic looking texture. I'm including a link to one I made here. This was an earlier, simpler version of what I finally ended up with for Otto & Schmitty, but it's enough to give you the basic idea. Again, we're not out to make it look real- so one of things I focused on was breaking up that nice, smooth gradient of light to dark that is very common in CG materials. A flatter appearance is key. Here's a quick snapshot of the hypershade node tree. My final one on Otto was actually even more complex. Who knew being simple would prove to be so complicated?
Once we have the color and the simple animation, let's put the secret ingredient- the wobbleDeformer. This is a plug-in deformer that you can download for free from CreativeCrash.net (formerly highend3d.com). What it does is simple- it wobbles your geometry over time. You'll need to go to your Windows > Preferences > Plug-Ins dialog to load the plug in. Once you have it loaded , select your geometry, go to Create Deformers > wobble Deformer. You should notice your geo gets warped some. Hit play or make a playBlast and you'll see the geometry wobble. (hence the name). The default settings are kinda mushy, so we'll push things a bit to roughen it up. Try bumping up the Frequency Scale and the Time Frequency for the wobble deformers attributes in the channel box. Also, if the deformer is making things wobble too much tone down the Space Frequency X, Y and Z and maybe the Strength, too. Here's a quick sample of the settings I used for this example....
OK, so it wobbles pretty good. But that's not enough. It needs some ink lines. So now what we want to do is add some ink lines to this. We'll use Maya's built in toon-line features. Select your mesh and add a paintFX toon line. Be sure to turn on Show Strokes in your Display menu so you can see them in your viewport. Here's a quick render of what the toon line looks like right out of the box....
Meh. The typical CG curse of perfection. We can't accept the toon ink line “as is”. We need to break the line up. Let's push it some. The primary issues are that the line thickness is too thin and too even. Fixing the thickness is easy. Just select the pfxToon object in your Outliner, then adjust the Line Width attribute in the channel box. Pick something that looks good. There's no magic number really.
Fixing the uniformity of the thickness is a bit trickier. For this we'll use a 2d Noise texture and pipe it into the LineWidthMap attribute. In your Hypergraph make a new 2d Noise texture and then connect it's outAlpha to the LineWidthMap of your pfxToon using the Connection Editor. (I'm not walking you step by step through that process- I'm assuming you know how to do these things. They're pretty basic.) Anyhow, the default Noise is a good start, but we can adjust the settings to get the best effect. A good example would be what I did for Schmitty...
Here's how that looks.
Better, but still not what we want. The thickness is non-uniform alright, but it doesn't change over time. So what I do is animate the Implode attribute on the Noise texture. I use a 4 or 5 frame cycle animation on it. Vary the settings from roughly -0.5 to 0.5. By doing this the Implode value will cycle for as long as your animation is and you'll get good results. Feel free to make the cycle have more frames in it, but 5 is a decent start. Here's how that looks...
Much better. But one obstacle remains. CG is really good at keeping perfect forms. The object is wobbling and the line thickness is changing, but the line is stuck right to the edge silhouette of the geometry. If we can get the line off the geometry that'd be pretty cool. Easy enough- just do the same Noise texture trick on the Line Offset Map attribute and set the Line Offset attribute to something noticeable. Make another Noise texture (or duplicate your other one), adjust it's settings to be different, animate its Implode values on a cycle and connect its outAlpha to the Line Offset Map attribute on the pfxToonShape. Here's the result....
Pretty cool- and that's pretty much all there is to it. There are other variations you can play around with. You could put the pfxToon on a duplicate object that has a slightly different wobble deformer setting on it but has its primary visibility disabled so all that renders is the toon line. This way the the color geometry and the ink lines aren't wobbling at the same frequency or amount, further adding some random organic-ness to the thing. And you can put more than one pfxToon on the object, too. With that approach you get the effect of multiple ink lines of varying transparencies and thicknesses and noise- maybe to emulate rough pencil lines. You can also put a noise texture on your color shader and animate that to break up the shading on the main part of the geometry. I'll let you and your imagination figure out ways to expand the concept. Here's a quick example of multiple ink lines and the hidden duplicate object technique...
Lastly, you can download the Maya 2009 files for you to mess with (here and here). Just remember- you'll need the Wobble Deformer installed for these to work properly.
Anyhow, I hope folks find this interesting. Enjoy!
First, animate your character. The trick- throw away all those fancy animated goodies you've fought so long and hard to learn how to do well. The secret to success in this approach is not technical fluidity and super fine detail work. Keep it simple. No Moving holds! Seriously. Lock those poses in flat. And don't worry too much about smooth f-curves or flowing motion. We're emulating a rougher style, remember? I found the less polished the curves the better the results. Oh, and I usually do this at 12 fps, not 24. So be sure to set your time settings appropriately. Here's a good example of what I mean.
And here's the f-curve editor just so you can see. There's nothing fancy in here at all. Just solid blocking basics, really. Poses, good breakdowns and maybe an ease if you think it's needed. Maybe.
Second, apply a non-realistic looking texture. I'm including a link to one I made here. This was an earlier, simpler version of what I finally ended up with for Otto & Schmitty, but it's enough to give you the basic idea. Again, we're not out to make it look real- so one of things I focused on was breaking up that nice, smooth gradient of light to dark that is very common in CG materials. A flatter appearance is key. Here's a quick snapshot of the hypershade node tree. My final one on Otto was actually even more complex. Who knew being simple would prove to be so complicated?
Once we have the color and the simple animation, let's put the secret ingredient- the wobbleDeformer. This is a plug-in deformer that you can download for free from CreativeCrash.net (formerly highend3d.com). What it does is simple- it wobbles your geometry over time. You'll need to go to your Windows > Preferences > Plug-Ins dialog to load the plug in. Once you have it loaded , select your geometry, go to Create Deformers > wobble Deformer. You should notice your geo gets warped some. Hit play or make a playBlast and you'll see the geometry wobble. (hence the name). The default settings are kinda mushy, so we'll push things a bit to roughen it up. Try bumping up the Frequency Scale and the Time Frequency for the wobble deformers attributes in the channel box. Also, if the deformer is making things wobble too much tone down the Space Frequency X, Y and Z and maybe the Strength, too. Here's a quick sample of the settings I used for this example....
OK, so it wobbles pretty good. But that's not enough. It needs some ink lines. So now what we want to do is add some ink lines to this. We'll use Maya's built in toon-line features. Select your mesh and add a paintFX toon line. Be sure to turn on Show Strokes in your Display menu so you can see them in your viewport. Here's a quick render of what the toon line looks like right out of the box....
Meh. The typical CG curse of perfection. We can't accept the toon ink line “as is”. We need to break the line up. Let's push it some. The primary issues are that the line thickness is too thin and too even. Fixing the thickness is easy. Just select the pfxToon object in your Outliner, then adjust the Line Width attribute in the channel box. Pick something that looks good. There's no magic number really.
Fixing the uniformity of the thickness is a bit trickier. For this we'll use a 2d Noise texture and pipe it into the LineWidthMap attribute. In your Hypergraph make a new 2d Noise texture and then connect it's outAlpha to the LineWidthMap of your pfxToon using the Connection Editor. (I'm not walking you step by step through that process- I'm assuming you know how to do these things. They're pretty basic.) Anyhow, the default Noise is a good start, but we can adjust the settings to get the best effect. A good example would be what I did for Schmitty...
Here's how that looks.
Better, but still not what we want. The thickness is non-uniform alright, but it doesn't change over time. So what I do is animate the Implode attribute on the Noise texture. I use a 4 or 5 frame cycle animation on it. Vary the settings from roughly -0.5 to 0.5. By doing this the Implode value will cycle for as long as your animation is and you'll get good results. Feel free to make the cycle have more frames in it, but 5 is a decent start. Here's how that looks...
Much better. But one obstacle remains. CG is really good at keeping perfect forms. The object is wobbling and the line thickness is changing, but the line is stuck right to the edge silhouette of the geometry. If we can get the line off the geometry that'd be pretty cool. Easy enough- just do the same Noise texture trick on the Line Offset Map attribute and set the Line Offset attribute to something noticeable. Make another Noise texture (or duplicate your other one), adjust it's settings to be different, animate its Implode values on a cycle and connect its outAlpha to the Line Offset Map attribute on the pfxToonShape. Here's the result....
Pretty cool- and that's pretty much all there is to it. There are other variations you can play around with. You could put the pfxToon on a duplicate object that has a slightly different wobble deformer setting on it but has its primary visibility disabled so all that renders is the toon line. This way the the color geometry and the ink lines aren't wobbling at the same frequency or amount, further adding some random organic-ness to the thing. And you can put more than one pfxToon on the object, too. With that approach you get the effect of multiple ink lines of varying transparencies and thicknesses and noise- maybe to emulate rough pencil lines. You can also put a noise texture on your color shader and animate that to break up the shading on the main part of the geometry. I'll let you and your imagination figure out ways to expand the concept. Here's a quick example of multiple ink lines and the hidden duplicate object technique...
Lastly, you can download the Maya 2009 files for you to mess with (here and here). Just remember- you'll need the Wobble Deformer installed for these to work properly.
Anyhow, I hope folks find this interesting. Enjoy!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
What is content and what is its value? -- Part 2
First, a big thumbs up thanks to my friend, the brilliant Hamish McKenzie (if you're a Maya animator/rigger and you're not using Hamish's fantastic ZooTools then you are living a life of needless pain and woe) for sending me some links to TechDirt, a blog that covers a lot of things about content, copyright, new age and social media based business models, etc.
In my last post I noted that I have drawn the conclusion that content (music, photographs, art, film, video, stories, etc.) is of no direct economic value outside of it's physical storage/delivery mechanism or the exclusive group experience of it (concerts, cinema, plays, etc.). This is a conclusion that a brief inspection of history itself seems to support. And as if that weren't enough, now in the digital internet age that limited value has become even less valuable- the point of direct economic worthlessness. The reason is simple- in the digital era there is no scarcity of digital files. The copy of a file does not diminish the existence of the source file. It is, literally, an infinite element. And anything that is (practically) infinite in availability is by nature economically worthless in a direct sense. Fair value for labor and all other "moral" constructs have no bearing. It's not a moral issue, it's a simple gravitational one. Let go of something, it falls. Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant. Make an infinite supply of something, its value drops to zero. Scarcity is what creates value. Any efforts to impose scarcity on digital content in today's world is a Quixotic quest, doomed to only increase the sales of Maalox to those who tip at these infinite windmills. Kids, the genie's out of the bottle and we cannot put it back in. Reality dictates we learn to function in this new paradigm. (for a much more thorough dissertation on the impact of infinite supply on the economic value of a work of content, read this excellent TechDirt post. Read the linked posts that preceded it as well. For some this will be old hat, but many of us are still arriving at this dinner party.)
Commenter Ian asked a good question on my previous post: Is this depressing or liberating? (and by "this" he means the understanding that digital content is without inherent direct economic value)
The answer, I suppose, lies in how you see the world. I've been in both camps- depressed and liberated. For the last 4+ years I've been fortunate enough to be able to make a living as an independent content creator with my VTS animation tutorial videos. There have been good times, but for the last 2 years or so there's been a steady erosion as unauthorized copies of my videos have become more available on the internet. I won't lie: unauthorized file sharing has put a sizable dent in my business, forcing me to consider alternative ways to feed la familia. However this is NOT a post whining about how people are stealing from my kids, etc. etc. etc. I knew 4 years ago when I started the VTS that file sharing would ultimately result. It's why I never bothered with copy protection or any of that stuff from the very start. I knew it was a waste of my most precious & limited resource- my time. While I'd certainly prefer that people pay for the valuable (I think) info on how to be a better animator contained in my VTS videos, I won't waste energy complaining about those who don't. Nor will I waste energy trying to stop them, either. Instead I'd rather focus my energy on adapting and moving forward.
In the spirit of embracing things as they are and not as I wish them to be, I've begun to make some new animation tutorial videos and putting them up on my YouTube channel for free. (some direct links here, here, here and here). A few folks have stumbled across them, but I haven't promoted or mentioned them here on my blog yet. I figured this is a good time to introduce them. I think they offer some good info- and they're free. Share 'em as you see fit. I hope they help folks out. I'm still producing new VTS videos each month for those who want something more (we're currently working on a very complex James Brown inspired dance sequence utilizing video reference). And you can still purchase over four years' worth of back issue VTS videos for even more in depth info on being a better animator. But I'm going to mix in more of these free videos, too. I'll make more as I get the time- but my time is going to become even more scarce in the coming days and weeks.
More on that in a bit.
In my last post I noted that I have drawn the conclusion that content (music, photographs, art, film, video, stories, etc.) is of no direct economic value outside of it's physical storage/delivery mechanism or the exclusive group experience of it (concerts, cinema, plays, etc.). This is a conclusion that a brief inspection of history itself seems to support. And as if that weren't enough, now in the digital internet age that limited value has become even less valuable- the point of direct economic worthlessness. The reason is simple- in the digital era there is no scarcity of digital files. The copy of a file does not diminish the existence of the source file. It is, literally, an infinite element. And anything that is (practically) infinite in availability is by nature economically worthless in a direct sense. Fair value for labor and all other "moral" constructs have no bearing. It's not a moral issue, it's a simple gravitational one. Let go of something, it falls. Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant. Make an infinite supply of something, its value drops to zero. Scarcity is what creates value. Any efforts to impose scarcity on digital content in today's world is a Quixotic quest, doomed to only increase the sales of Maalox to those who tip at these infinite windmills. Kids, the genie's out of the bottle and we cannot put it back in. Reality dictates we learn to function in this new paradigm. (for a much more thorough dissertation on the impact of infinite supply on the economic value of a work of content, read this excellent TechDirt post. Read the linked posts that preceded it as well. For some this will be old hat, but many of us are still arriving at this dinner party.)
Commenter Ian asked a good question on my previous post: Is this depressing or liberating? (and by "this" he means the understanding that digital content is without inherent direct economic value)
The answer, I suppose, lies in how you see the world. I've been in both camps- depressed and liberated. For the last 4+ years I've been fortunate enough to be able to make a living as an independent content creator with my VTS animation tutorial videos. There have been good times, but for the last 2 years or so there's been a steady erosion as unauthorized copies of my videos have become more available on the internet. I won't lie: unauthorized file sharing has put a sizable dent in my business, forcing me to consider alternative ways to feed la familia. However this is NOT a post whining about how people are stealing from my kids, etc. etc. etc. I knew 4 years ago when I started the VTS that file sharing would ultimately result. It's why I never bothered with copy protection or any of that stuff from the very start. I knew it was a waste of my most precious & limited resource- my time. While I'd certainly prefer that people pay for the valuable (I think) info on how to be a better animator contained in my VTS videos, I won't waste energy complaining about those who don't. Nor will I waste energy trying to stop them, either. Instead I'd rather focus my energy on adapting and moving forward.
In the spirit of embracing things as they are and not as I wish them to be, I've begun to make some new animation tutorial videos and putting them up on my YouTube channel for free. (some direct links here, here, here and here). A few folks have stumbled across them, but I haven't promoted or mentioned them here on my blog yet. I figured this is a good time to introduce them. I think they offer some good info- and they're free. Share 'em as you see fit. I hope they help folks out. I'm still producing new VTS videos each month for those who want something more (we're currently working on a very complex James Brown inspired dance sequence utilizing video reference). And you can still purchase over four years' worth of back issue VTS videos for even more in depth info on being a better animator. But I'm going to mix in more of these free videos, too. I'll make more as I get the time- but my time is going to become even more scarce in the coming days and weeks.
More on that in a bit.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Offset Keys vs. Changing Shapes
A student emailed me and asked about how to handle the spine for overlap & such. He was seeing so many fellow animators using the 'offset keys' approach in their efforts to try and get drag and overlap in their movements, but he felt it created more problems than it solved. I have to agree with him.
For the un-itiated, 'offset keys' is a technical approach in CG to try and achieve an organic solution of weight. The basic idea of the offset-keys approach is as follows: The character moves from frame 1 to frame 10, frame 10 being the pose you want to move into.
The offset-keys technique in theory is very logical. The idea is that if the hips hit at frame 10, then if the mid-spine hits at 11, the up-spine hits at 12 and the head hits at 13 then you'll get good overlap.
The key to good weight in a move is to get a sense of drag during the move. This is done not by some math trick but by making the changing shapes work as the character moves. When combined with some overlap at the end of the move things look much better and are a lot easier to clean up. If there's one thing CG animators need to do it is to start thinking about changing shapes in motion and to stop thinking in terms of moving parts. Moving parts are technical. Changing shapes are organic. All animation - regardless of media - is a 2d image on a screen. CG animators just use a puppet to create those visual shapes on a 2d plane. The visual impression of shapes changing in 2d hand-drawn animation will work in CG. We need to shift our thinking to how to make those shapes work for us. The key comes back again to making good breakdowns. Breakdowns are the secret to the shapes, the secret to getting clean motion with weight.
Here's a quick visual that might help.
What's really ironic is that many, many 2d hand drawn animators forget this when they get on a computer (I have my theories as to why). The result is the same weightless movement we associate with CG.
Really the problem is all in our heads.
UPDATE: Commenter Jim notes that offsetting keys is very useful in the polishing stage of a shot. I agree. At the final polish stage I offset keys quite a bit, sometimes on a per channel basis. Key offsetting is a perfectly valid technique as a tool for polishing the motion because at that point it's all fine detail modification. However key offsets are unsuited as a technique for building the fundamental motion to begin with.
For the un-itiated, 'offset keys' is a technical approach in CG to try and achieve an organic solution of weight. The basic idea of the offset-keys approach is as follows: The character moves from frame 1 to frame 10, frame 10 being the pose you want to move into.
The offset-keys technique in theory is very logical. The idea is that if the hips hit at frame 10, then if the mid-spine hits at 11, the up-spine hits at 12 and the head hits at 13 then you'll get good overlap.
Like I said, logical in theory. But weak in practice. At best - when the technique works perfectly- all you get is some overlap at the end of the move, but you get absolutely no drag in the middle of the move. Drag during the move is where the weight comes from. Simply overlapping parts at the end of the move is not enough- it's a cheap trick that doesn't solve the problem. And the technique rarely works perfectly. Due to the way each object in CG works mathematically you end up with all kinds of unintended consequences when you use the offset method. The most common result is a funky hitch in the motion due to the way the math mixes at a given frame for the combination of controllers. (compare this non-offset animation to this one that uses offset keys. Note the junky bits of motion.) These unintended consequences make cleaning up the move much harder and often leads to the animator setting a ton of extra keys all over, tweaking a bunch of f-curves, making dozens of playBlast previews all in the effort to get rid of the hitches in the motion. The animator's energy is spent on removing motion problems introduced by the offset-keys trick, not on building good animation.
The key to good weight in a move is to get a sense of drag during the move. This is done not by some math trick but by making the changing shapes work as the character moves. When combined with some overlap at the end of the move things look much better and are a lot easier to clean up. If there's one thing CG animators need to do it is to start thinking about changing shapes in motion and to stop thinking in terms of moving parts. Moving parts are technical. Changing shapes are organic. All animation - regardless of media - is a 2d image on a screen. CG animators just use a puppet to create those visual shapes on a 2d plane. The visual impression of shapes changing in 2d hand-drawn animation will work in CG. We need to shift our thinking to how to make those shapes work for us. The key comes back again to making good breakdowns. Breakdowns are the secret to the shapes, the secret to getting clean motion with weight.
Here's a quick visual that might help.
Really the problem is all in our heads.
UPDATE: Commenter Jim notes that offsetting keys is very useful in the polishing stage of a shot. I agree. At the final polish stage I offset keys quite a bit, sometimes on a per channel basis. Key offsetting is a perfectly valid technique as a tool for polishing the motion because at that point it's all fine detail modification. However key offsets are unsuited as a technique for building the fundamental motion to begin with.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Pesky gimbal spinning problems got you down?
I've been meaning to make a short video tutorial about how to solve gimbal spinning for a while now. Today I figured was a good time to do that.
Here's my little way of solving those pesky gimbal spinning problems...
![]()
It's about 7 minutes in length.
Note- this is NOT a solution for gimbal lock, which is a different kind of gimbal problem. (one not quite so easily solved, unfortunately)
Caveats aside, I hope this helps some folks.
Here's my little way of solving those pesky gimbal spinning problems...
It's about 7 minutes in length.
Note- this is NOT a solution for gimbal lock, which is a different kind of gimbal problem. (one not quite so easily solved, unfortunately)
Caveats aside, I hope this helps some folks.
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