Content

Post new topic Reply to topic

[3dsmax] Frame by frame animating

Author Message
Mima The Disciple View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, January 09, 2012

Hello everyone. Today you get a new tutorial from our very own, Zielan. He is away at the moment, but it's his work.
Let's get to it then, shall we?


"Hello, in this tutorial I aim to show you on how to animate "frame by frame". "Frame by frame" means that you animate every single
frame of the animation you are aiming to create. You will propably ask : "Why would you waste time on that Zielan?" , well you see
"frame by frame" animations are as accurate as they can be and seem more natural to Dragon Ball or anything you are making the
animations from.

Step 1: References. You should get some frame by frame references for the animation you are creating.



Step 2: Setting up the references. You can do this in two ways:
1. Creating a "reference plane" in 3dsmax with definitions of your reference picture.
1.1 Dragging your reference picture onto the plane.
2. Opening the image file in any image viewer. (I prefer this because I'm lazy)





Step 3: Selecting the auto key.


Step 4: Setting up the model for work. You make the model transparent by using Alt + X hotkeys and then by right clicking it freeze it (Makes the model unselectable)



Step 5: Creating a frame. You set up the model to be exactly like in your reference picture (Watch for details)
Tip: The parts you can't see in the picture you have to imagine. Also, a very important note: Check ALL (I repeat ALL!!!) viewports
after setting the animation in one. Even if it seems perfect in one viewport, it can be rather silly in the other. (I'm sorry I don't have a better screenshot)



Step 6: Duplicating a frame. You duplicate a frame by holding Shift and dragging the key to another frame.



Step 7: After finishing all frames, go through them again, to spot every single tiny detail.


I hope this helps. Here's a pastie of this tutorial as well.
Credits go to Skatter, and Mima for helping me put up this tutorial."

JayREEZY View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, January 09, 2012

It's nice to hear from Zielan Razz . So, is this just part one? Or is this the whole tutuorial?

Anyway, nice tutorial Ziema/Meilan. Laughing

I want to post some mêlée combo referneces here if I get some time. I just hope there is a program for ripping frame-by-frame images instead of me pausing and playing constantly.

Mima The Disciple View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, January 09, 2012

This is the whole process. Of course, if you need more explaining about ANY step, just tell me/Z, and we shall explain. Smile

JayREEZY View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, January 09, 2012

I'm sorry, but these aren't frame-by-frame. Sad I just want to help as much as I can...

I was going to animate these too, but maybe Zielan can beat me to the punch. Smile Here is an example of Goku's Super Saiyan 3 mêlée combos.

I would like to work on other transformations later, but he seems to repeat those first two alternating jabs in every one. I just hope I don't resort to ripping BT animation refs, but those are still influenced by the anime.

EDIT: Actually, I think that's how they animated it(1 frame per hit). Maybe I did actually get each frame? I still urge that these should be either 2 or 3 frames each for better blending.

ssj6vegeta View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, January 09, 2012

my master Zielan was supposed to teach me first hand.

oh well

jayreezy I might try those sometime as an experiment

TRL View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Nice tutorial, it's a nice pose there.

Pro tip: If you add too many frames to a punch animation it will look slow and lose it's "impact", "oomph". From my experience with animating 2D sprites it's better to have one frame of preparing the punch with the fist next to the body or head and then directly the second frame the full outstretched arm for maximum speed. Also make the entire body launch forward and not just the arm.

VladUzumaki View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

TRL you can use this pose for Goku Super Saiyan when he use Spirit Bomb

Zeth The Admin View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Pro tip: If you add too many frames to a punch animation it will look slow and lose it's "impact", "oomph". From my experience with animating 2D sprites it's better to have one frame of preparing the punch with the fist next to the body or head and then directly the second frame the full outstretched arm for maximum speed. Also make the entire body launch forward and not just the arm.


This style of "animation" doesn't require tips like these as the timing is 100% derived from the actual animation from the screenshots. The "hard in, soft out" approach is already handled for you.

I would recommend that everyone use static references of full body poses rather than closeups or ones with camera changes (as Mima has collected in the past). They make a world of difference when replicating an animation.

TRL View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Yeah my tips were directly directed to Jay who mentioned adding frames he didn't see in the refs. I basically explained why the anime has it animated like that in the first place.

JayREEZY View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

You make it sound like I've never animated before TRL Laughing .It doesn't take rocket science to know where his legs are at the bottom, or to know how much force he applied. It's an anime, his limbs should be stretched to the maximum for whenever he throws any of his limbs(preferably in the second to last frame). Dragon Ball Z isn't the only anime that's animated that way.

This scene was never in full body, but it shows his mêlée moves very easy to see. If you can help find more though, that would also be nice. Wink

TRL View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 10, 2012

What are you talking about jay stretched legs? Did you even get what my first post was about?

EqR View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, January 11, 2012

And this is why the animations are choppy.

Now let me clear something up; I'm no animator and I'm not trying to critize anyone on the team. But isn't it common sense that, if Dragon Ball as an anime is drawn in 24 frames timeline, LOT's of those drawn frames are duplicated or even triplicated, to lenghten a certain animation. And when you take that too literaly and translate it into game animation where you're working with a 60fps environment... you get a lot of choppy movement.

And how fast something looks and feels indeed depends on the animators skill and how short an animation is, but why for Lloyds sake would you think that in a punch having 5 frames of which w are stills (or something) would add to the animation?

EDIT.1: And why is lloyd "filtered" with a different word? I don't know if that's hillarious or just plain lacking.

EDIT.2: And why the heck was my subjective take on filtered, and not filtered, filtered? Or in your case, filtered?

EDIT.3: OH, SERIOUSLY, HOW IS "heck" A BAD WORD. love. There you go. freaking' Alyaska bears.

Zeth The Admin View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Saturday, January 14, 2012

And this is why the animations are choppy.


It's interesting that you make this comment when none of the existing animations in ZEQ2-lite do this guide's frame by frame keyframe time-sampled approach. The reason certain animations in ZEQ2-lite may appear choppy is because they are such low frame-counts in comparison to what they need to be.

Unlike games that have a skeleton format to utilize for animations, ZEQ2-lite uses Quake 3 (which uses MD3). MD3 uses vertex snapshots of each frame in order to produce animations. This means that if your mesh file size is 200KB in size, you are duplicating its vertexes (and size) entirely each and every frame of animation you have. This does give you a bonus in supplying access to easy vertex animations for expressions/hair/clothing, but does extend a large deficit in memory/disk space usage.

There are plans to utilize much higher frame counts in the future; however, this does not relate at all to the concept of frame by frame referencing animations.

I'm not trying to critize anyone on the team.


I'm not sure how long it's been since you've been around, but just to clear things up, there hasn't been a "team" since 2007 (since before the reincarnation of the Quake 3 version). ZEQ2-lite is driven by an assortment of various people contributing code, models, maps, etc. There's no commitment involved, no meetings, little organized planning/direction on the parts of many, no assigned tasks, and no management. These were all present in the previous incarnation where a team DID exist. These days, we're lucky to barely even know a person or see them long enough to get them to toss a few items into the SVN and leave.

But isn't it common sense that, if Dragon Ball as an anime is drawn in 24 frames timeline, LOT's of those drawn frames are duplicated or even triplicated, to lenghten a certain animation. And when you take that too literaly and translate it into game animation where you're working with a 60fps environment... you get a lot of choppy movement.


Animations have a separate playback framerate than the game itself. This mechanism is in place to ensure that timing is consistent regardless of player framerate. To address your concern, yes, without framerate scaling or frame interpolation, animations would appear choppy since they are based on a variable framerate (not necessarily 60).

You are making too many presumptions about how animations are handled presently and moreover at the level of specificity involved in the frame-by-frame application. To account for issues with per-vertex mesh lerping in Quake 3, animations that will (future tense) be done in this style will not be on a 1:1 basis. Instead, only the frame counts will be sampled from references with keyframes created just on changing poses.

The important key factors with frame-by-frame animations are the timings of segments/transitions and the poses themselves -- not necessarily the variable interpolation between frames.

And how fast something looks and feels indeed depends on the animators skill and how short an animation is, but why for Lloyds sake would you think that in a punch having 5 frames of which w are stills (or something) would add to the animation?


As I mentioned previously, this is all about the duration of segments and relates entirely to the timing and transition aspects of the animations. It does not directly effect how many frames of motion you will see in your own environment. Although it's strange that you are almost suggesting that a pause/delay in an animation is a bad thing.

EDIT.1: And why is lloyd "filtered" with a different word? I don't know if that's hillarious or just plain lacking.

EDIT.2: And why the heck was my subjective take on filtered, and not filtered, filtered? Or in your case, filtered?

EDIT.3: OH, SERIOUSLY, HOW IS "heck" A BAD WORD. love. There you go. freaking' Alyaska bears.


I took you as a veteran as I'd recognized the name, but if you don't know about the word filter, then I may have been mistaken. Its existence is for multiple reasons well beyond just blocking obscenities. It serves role in acronym replacements, typo cleanup, turning aggressive comments into nonsense, and so forth. Don't question it and don't go around it (this simply makes it grow). The word filter is a beast of it's own with more manual entries than likely any other phpBB installation and has been a staple of the ZEQ2-lite community culture for many forum generations.

Lfs Z Artist View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Sunday, January 15, 2012

Just a small tip. And WARNING: This might be handy for experienced users. The provided tip is just for handiness. Yet it might take some more time.

The user can do material swaps on keyframe so that when he moves the key the 'reference' would change to the next frame.

Of course, this is very time consuming, but yet at the end you won't need keep dragging it and checking if everything is okay.

Post new topic Reply to topic

Actions

Online [ 0 / 6125]