How to animate on 2s and 4s?

[Yosemite Sam]

Hi everyone.

Started a project where I will need to produce animations done on 2s, and possibly 4s. Very simple animations.

Is there a way to do this after the animation is done on 1s already?

If not, what is the process for animating on 2s in Moho? I'm on version 14. I found a YouTube video from Victor from over 8 years ago, just wondering if there's been any updates to doing this?

Thanks!

[Greenlaw]

If you have After Effects, add the Posterize Motion effect to an Adjustment Layer above your Moho layers and dial it to 12. If the animation was animated on ones at 24 fps, this converts the animation's frame Interval to 2.

I use this cheat all the time. It's easy, cheap, and removes the 'digital' smoothness some people object to. Watch that it doesn't hide any important key poses or mouth shapes. If that happens, you might need to tweak the timing of your animation; at this stage, you can do that in Moho or Ae, whichever is easier for you.

Alternatively, you can set keyframes in Moho to play at different frame intervals. I've just started to play with this feature, though, and can't offer much help here yet. I was getting some funky results, but with Wes' help, I learned that the Frame Interval is reset every time you key it, so I think you have to be careful to key on only odd or even frames. I decided to explore this later and returned to my old Ae trick for my current task.

[Greenlaw]

Another trick is to remove every other frame of your animation and then time-stretch the remaining frames 2X. This one, you can do in Moho in a second project. It's probably easier to do in a video editor, though.

BTW, Black Magic Design's Fusion can fill the missing frames by holding the existing ones, so time stretching is unnecessary. Just import the footage, enable the hold=for-missing-frames option in the Load node, and render. We used this trick on an anime-style commercial for Nissan back in 2001. (Sorry, I might have the node names and terminology wrong because it's been a while since I used Fusion, but it's easy to figure out.)

[Greenlaw]

Here's one more: depending on how you animated the Moho project, you could also grab all the keyframes and use Alt+Drag to compress the animation to half (for twos) or one-quarter (for fours) of the duration, then render that out. Then, in your compositing or video editing program, time stretch it the desired duration.

Or, you can do this with the original frames rendered on ones. Just bring the footage into a capable program, retime it, render it, and then stretch it. Make sure you don't have Frame Blending or another interpolation method enabled. This one should be easier than the previous suggestion and probably work better.

[Víctor Paredes]

You can select all your keyframes and change them to work on twos or fours. Then change the timeline settings to show markers every two or four frames. I also recommend you to set the default interpolation to twos or fours.
Since your animation was already created, you need to be sure everything works without trembing. To do that, check that all your keys (on all layers) are on top of a marker. If a key is not, move it to the left until it is on top of a marker.
If the animation starts happening from frame zero, be sure to freeze the pose on frame one, so the first frames of the animation also move on twos/fours.
If you want to create new keyframes, always add them on top of a marker and with the interval you want.

[Daxel]

On top of all those methods, I would use the export option "Render at half frame rate" at the Export Animation window. This will make your on 1s animation look like on 2s. Of course this gives you less control over which poses or keyframes stay in the animation but try it, it will probably look fine on 2s, as 12 fps is still relatively high in 2D animation.

[Greenlaw]

On top of all those methods, I would use the export option "Render at half frame rate" at the Export Animation window....

Great call! I totally forgot about this option!

Trying to recall exactly what we did on that Nissan anime commercial. (Geez...that was 23 years ago!) I believe we animated in our 3D program (LightWave) at 30 fps, rendered at 15 fps, and then time-stretched it 2X in Fusion with held frames enabled to fill the 'missing' frames. This works to simulate animating on 2s, of course. I have a few shots from it on my old Rhythm & Hues demo reel. (I think I'll post the whole thing later this year.)

Anyway, you can do the same thing using the Moho option referred to by Daxel.

[Yosemite Sam]

Here's one more: depending on how you animated the Moho project, you could also grab all the keyframes and use Alt+Drag to compress the animation to half (for twos) or one-quarter (for fours) of the duration, then render that out. Then, in your compositing or video editing program, time stretch it the desired duration.

Or, you can do this with the original frames rendered on ones. Just bring the footage into a capable program, retime it, render it, and then stretch it. Make sure you don't have Frame Blending or another interpolation method enabled. This one should be easier than the previous suggestion and probably work better.

Green,

Appreciate all the valuable feedback!

[Yosemite Sam]

On top of all those methods, I would use the export option "Render at half frame rate" at the Export Animation window. This will make your on 1s animation look like on 2s. Of course this gives you less control over which poses or keyframes stay in the animation but try it, it will probably look fine on 2s, as 12 fps is still relatively high in 2D animation.

Smart! Thanks a lot!

[Yosemite Sam]

You can select all your keyframes and change them to work on twos or fours. Then change the timeline settings to show markers every two or four frames. I also recommend you to set the default interpolation to twos or fours.
Since your animation was already created, you need to be sure everything works without trembing. To do that, check that all your keys (on all layers) are on top of a marker. If a key is not, move it to the left until it is on top of a marker.
If the animation starts happening from frame zero, be sure to freeze the pose on frame one, so the first frames of the animation also move on twos/fours.
If you want to create new keyframes, always add them on top of a marker and with the interval you want.

Thank you, Victor!