Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

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shift
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Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by shift »

Is there a technique to make bone styled animation look like frame by frame? Maybe messing with frame rates or sample rates etc?
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funksmaname
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by funksmaname »

In AS 9.x you can control the intervals used on a per keyframe basis - if you set them to 2's this will look more old school, and just use 1's when you are creating fast actions that don't work on 2s. Try combinations of different intervals to get the look you want, and try to play with doubling/blurring/smearing on fast actions
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by GCharb »

As funks says, if You create animation on 2s, it will look more like traditional animation!

Also, interpolation makes animation looks way too smooth, so I suggest You use steps as interpolation method, which really means no interpolation at all, which means that You will have to animate your animation on every frames, this way You will have true frame by frame animation, but with the benefits of bones, this method implies much more work of course!
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by slowtiger »

It will look traditional if you can animate it like that. Frame rate has not much to do with this.
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GCharb
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by GCharb »

slowtiger wrote:It will look traditional if you can animate it like that. Frame rate has not much to do with this.
Frame by frame animation is just that, animation that is animated by hand on every frames, whether You use bones or not, now is irrelevant!

If You want real frame by frame with a real classical look, then of course You'd have to draw every frames by hand, and animating frame by frame on 2s, which means every two frames, will certainly give it a more traditional feel, as this method was used allot in the old days, and today as well, to save on time and money, now We are used to it!
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jahnocli
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by jahnocli »

I'd HATE to put words in slowtiger's mouth, but I'm pretty sure he meant that frame-by-frame animation is more to do with your talent and ability than mechanics...
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by GCharb »

jahnocli wrote:I'd HATE to put words in slowtiger's mouth, but I'm pretty sure he meant that frame-by-frame animation is more to do with your talent and ability than mechanics...
The question was about technique, talent is a given prerequisite in any type of animation!
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jahnocli
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by jahnocli »

GCharb wrote:
jahnocli wrote:I'd HATE to put words in slowtiger's mouth, but I'm pretty sure he meant that frame-by-frame animation is more to do with your talent and ability than mechanics...
The question was about technique, talent is a given prerequisite in any type of animation!
No, the techniques mentioned in the original post concerned the mechanics of how the program operated, which was missing the point...
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AmigaMan
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by AmigaMan »

I would say a combination of bone / smart bone animation (for head turns etc) initially followed by several passes refining point animation could achieve something approaching the look of hand drawn frame by frame animation. Although most hand drawn animation is done on 'two's' the frame rates etc has little to do with the 'look' of it.
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djwaterman
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by djwaterman »

Look, I'm new to these pages and new to the program, only just installed a few days ago, but i have been watching lots of promo material about what's new in 9.5 and I'm absolutely certain that this frame by frame look is something that can be easily done by check boxing something, probably in the keyframe graphs, it basically turns all the in between frames into stepped frames. If i can re-locate the video I'll link to it.
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by djwaterman »

It is in the keyframe options when you have a bunch selected and right mouse over them, under "Interval" you can change the frame rate there.
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AmigaMan
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by AmigaMan »

That has nothing to do with animation looking like 'frame by frame' though.
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djwaterman
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by djwaterman »

It's something we do in 3D animation all the time if we are trying to give it that stop-motion look. It basically gets rid of the smoothness that is inherent in digital animation. Yes if you want absolute exact frame by frame look then animate every drawing frame by frame, but the question was is there a way to make bone controlled animations look more frame by frame. This will do it.
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AmigaMan
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by AmigaMan »

The point about changing the framerate / interpolation was made in the very first post.
Yes, as most 2D drawn animation is shot 'on 2's' then changing frame rate will help marginally. Changing the interpolation method in 3D computer animation can get a stop-motion look because you are essentially working with a puppet (albeit within the computer) just the same as in stop-motion, so yes that will work to some degree. The question here was how can you make bone animation in Anime Studio look like frame by frame (or hand drawn) animation. Not stop-motion. By the way, I'm primarily a stop-motion animator who started in 2D hand drawn and now works in 3D computer animation.

For Anime Studio, or bone animation, to look like hand drawn you would have to do a lot more than just change the frame rate in my opinion. You need to give the impression that the character can move freely in 3D space. Most Anime Studio animators rig their character's in one pose and use that for the whole animation with maybe just a few switch layers for head turns etc. That's perfectly fine for a cut-out look but it does also 'feel' restricted and the viewer detects that it's not hand drawn as it's obviously one image (drawing) being manipulated in some way. The key is to give the illusion that your character is able to turn and move in space. That's something associated with hand drawn or 'frame by frame' animation. The best Anime Studio animation demonstrates this and is almost indistinguishable from hand drawn animation.
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slowtiger
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Re: Making Bone animation look like frame by frame

Post by slowtiger »

The original question is somewhat narrowly focused. "Does is look frame-by-frame" is not a question any audience member asks. They will ask "Is it good animation?"

It is OK to try to achieve a certain style, but a style is so much more than frame-by-frame which is just a technical term for a production technique. I can make something look like it's done in one way while in fact it was done in another, but that works only as long as I know to do it both ways myself. "Frame-by-frame" in essence means that you're a bloody good draughtsman, an actor with your pencil. Do you really think you can emulate being agood artist just by changing frame rates or interpolation methods?
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