Bryce Animation Brain Dump (Was "Key-Flame: A.M.L. (Basic Intro)")
Oroboros
Posts: 326
Howdy,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KLo2qsr9yY
Not exactly covering anything new... but it's ∞ times more than what the Bryce 7.1 manual has to say on the Advanced Motion Lab :-)
Enjoy!
Post edited by Oroboros on
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Comments
That is a great video. Thanks for providing it.
@Oro - thanks for the video, professionally done as always. Good tip to look into Susan's book since animation hasn't changed since then.
great job !
lot of fun to see !
Looking forward to watching this when I get home tonight thanks Oroboros.
I did find an online webpage tutorial ( the few videos on YouTube were not much help) last week and have started experimenting with the AML.
This will no doubt be a massive help.
I spent most of the weekend optimising the file and managed to shave about 60Mb off it by deleting all the geometry that doesn't show in the scene... I''m hoping this will help a lot in time saving for navigating opening, saving, animating and test rendering.
I do a MOP before rendering out an animation, which is a Materials Optimisation Pass. It has less to do with filesize and complexity (which is what deleting objects is about) more about speeding up render time.
For instance, refraction and reflection are taxing demands. So I try using specularity to stand-in for these optics if they're not critical. Visible lights are also tricky: I've had some success in just using cones or sphere primitives with a fuzzy rendering intent. I also head to the render settings and chop back any shaders I might not need (like transmissions or reflections) and instead of the MRD=6/TIR=2 default I try around the 2/2, 3/2 or even 2/1 settings.
Finally, remember that there are ways to view your render that may provide a better preview than trying to render even quarter-sized previews. You have the thumbnail render tool, and while small, can be a good compositional overview; there's the wireframe export secret tool – set up your export settings, but instead of clicking the tick that OKs the render to go ahead, SHIFT-click the tick for a wireframe-only movie of your scene. Tip: with intelligent Family coloring you can get a decent, fullscreen appreciation of framing and timing with just a wireframe movie. (You can also do a Textures Off movie for more solid results).
I'm trying to learn animation in Bryce, after I learnt how to make the camera go round and round, but it is difficult. I don't have Susan's book so presently I using Robin Woods tutorials..I bookmarked your YouTube site and will visit again after I learned the basics. I really would like to try the Simple orbits.
Hi Mermaid,
Yeah, Simple orbits is a nice vid that's mainly about parenting. Parenting's like grouping, only without the enclosing box, and a lot more options. If you're just starting off, I suggest just trying out the first part of the tutorial - parenting the spheres and creating the orbits - and forget about the second part where I'm adding more spheres around the initial spheres for materials. I consider that a finesse bit that really shouldn't have been part of an introductory tutorial - sorry about that :)
Unless I've got glass and sometimes liquids, I don't bother with TIR and usually start MRD at 3 or 2.
For my still commercial renders and pack shots, I always use TA which I'm having to learn to do without when animating. HDR is better and more efficient than fill lights or other cheats like ambient channels but still cumulatively an extra minute per frame on 240 frames adds up.
Thanks again Oroboros.
Sure: Use the transport controls at the bottom. The thumbnail sequence only deletes when you escape from the thumbnail preview window. But once the thumbnails have been generated (or even when you stop the frame render mid-sequence) the thumbnail preview should play from the first to last rendered frame using the transport controls.
@Dave: Cute animation and neat music.
@Dave - hehe, liked it. Good speed control.
Heh he, so that's how 'Spidey the man' got his moves - it was all down to bungi-ing ;)
Jay
Thanks Oroboros, I will give you a shout when I need help. I just completed the Butterfly animation - Robin Woods and it is about parenting. Bryce is fun and Bryce animation is awesome, when one gets it right. ;) :)
Dave-cute spider animation ... love it
One question - what program do you use to add the sound and what file format do you upload to Youtube?
Thanks everyone.. :)
I use iMovie to edit and add soundtracks ect.
And I save the files out as either full quality .dv file (because that's quickest), or sometimes as mp4. YouTube processes them and puts them in the correct format to view. :)
Today I did a bit of parenting the camera to one object and having it track another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rodgv87_KGA
This afternoon I had been working on trying to figure out how I could make a working piston and fly wheel, but a long way into the build, I made the schoolboy error of entering the AML without saving the job first and lost a majority of what I'd done... It wasn't working anyway..
Thanks Dave, i will check to see if I can upload an avi file sans music directly on to Youtube
The Caddy Spin is awesome, except for the shadows. Since I did my first animation for this month's tree challenge, I got the animation bug and I'm trying all sorts of tutorials.
I did this a few days ago following this tutorial http://www.clydesight.com/brsteam/index.html, you know me I don't have enough gray cells to do my own thinking and need tutorials. Is this similar to the working piston and fly wheel you modeled?
Edited: I removed the gif file as there was something wrong with the upload.
Ah, the ol' flywheel :)
Building flywheel mechanics is another really good lesson in parenting and tracking – all machines boil down to tracking, parenting and looping exercises.
Until you come to collision physics simulations :/ That's when you start spending unreasonable amounts of time in the AML, and the AML starts becoming the animator's version of the Deep Texture Editor (but far easier to understand, IMO).
Savage: Yeah baby, now we're talking :) Easy-on-the-eyes camera work. Watch the bump channel on the carseat textures. Have a go at disabling bump for textures giving you an inordinate amount of shimmer.
Bryce allows morphing too (short, low frame rate YoutUbe vid), opening up a whole new area e.g. say, you could start off with a blue-coloured car and by the end of the sequence you could have it red...etc. Morphing with lights, metaballs, and all the interaction in between could be possible, too, I would think (haven't exactly tried them).
Jay
The latest part of the animation project... The company logo will go at the very beginning of the completed movie (which was given the green light by the client yesterday so now the hard work begins).
I ended up having to model the logo from scratch in Bryce using primitives and booleans... That was no easy task, but I did import the logo as a picture on the ground and then used an overhead camera so at least I had a guide to work to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enef8ocovBM
Congrats that's cool, getting the green light, nice animation
@Jama: Woo, going back a few years, those animations :)
Strictly speaking, Bryce only 'morphs' metaballs. Morphing is the fluid change of one image or shape into another with the effect of tricking the brain that the beginning form 'grows into' the end form. You could argue that the transition from a cube into a sheared rhombic prism is morphing.You could also argue that a simple dissolve from one image to another is morphing. But neither of these techniques fool the brain into thinking one form has become a new form: it's just been distorted or replaced.
Several of those transitions are simply material animations, which just changes the color or quality of the primitive's appearance. There's a Key-Flame tutorial on animating materials too :)
@Savage: Woo, look at all those collision simulations :) The portfolio's really coming along!
@Jamahoney - I found the videos riveting. Real cool meta-effects. I don't care how old they are, they were new to me, and inspiring. Good use of sound.
@TheSavage64 - I really liked the time you went into to make sure the reflections in the wet surface placed it in a real world in the mind. As far as using primitives and Booleans ... isn't that the heart and sole of Bryce? (Or am I thinking of terrains and clouds?) Nice job. I hope the wizard appreciates what you went through.
Cheers, Oroboros. Yeah, sort-of morphing, I suppose. The vid- samples really are 'crappy' (done on the fly), however, as a transitional (morphing?) effect, it might serve some use (or be aware of it) for those getting into the Bryce animation area.
Thanks, CTippetts. As simple animations there were easy to make - no real need for physic-type effects, just all fun ;)
Savage...love the progress you're making - the ani., side of Bryce can be an eye-opener; even when it doesn't do the things you want it to actually do.
Jay
I’m posting this here although I have not ventured into the AML yet. This gif animation is a combination of Oroboros’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZiS1hykw4&index=1&list=PL7668CF977709F487
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW7lt_qEN7M&index=4&list=PL7668CF977709F487
David’s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6qEJS59O_w
and Robin Wood’s tutorials on animation.
Edited: for some reason the gif animation is not uploading properly. I will try to upload to Youtube
Edited again: I uploaded it to my Pinterest account, you can see some of my other trials and errors there.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120756830138/
Excellent work, Mermaid – You even managed to get a few eclipses in there as well!
Now... Let me attempt to blow your mind :D
1) Select the smallest planet.
2) In the Edit Menu, go to the small double-arrowed 'Convert Selection To...' tool, and select a stone.
Hey presto! Orbiting asteroid! And you don't need to change any keyframe information!
Below image might appear corrupted, but clicking on it will let it play in a pop-up window.
Thanks Oroboros, I will give it a try.
I changed the small planet into a stone as suggested by Oroboros and tried some camera animation increasing then deceasing the FOV. It’s so cool playing with Bryce, and animations is just a addictive as doing abstracts in Bryce. Although I still don’t understand the AML I still had a lot of fun.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120756839025/
ONE OF US... ONE OF US...
You're doing great, Mermaid :)
The swap-sphere-for-rock trick takes advantage of the difference between States and Parameters, talked about in KEY-FLAME: Animating Materials. You can't animate on/off changes in States. "Sphere" is a state. "Stone" is a state. You can't animate a sphere into a stone... But if you make that single change, the animation engine just doesn't care about WHAT the primitive is, just how it moves, deforms or alters its coloring.
The key lesson is: you can model animations of complex model parts, using simple parts first, just to keep things understandable. Then you can parent or group more complex parts to the base 'arms' of the animation, and they just hang on for the ride. (Generally, the workflow is the other way around: you build your model first, parent all the parts to a base object, and just animate that one controlling object).
The key part about the AML is acceleration. By default, all timelines use constant speed, both linear and angular motion*. But if you want things to speed up, slow down, or move in retrograde motion, that's what the AML is for.
* This isn't quite true – some easing is pre-applied to keyframes in a trajectory. This easing is removed if you convert the trajectory into a path... But that's another story.
@mermaid: Both of those animations are neat. The small orbiting body even has the "backing up" look to it. Neat.
No not yet but thanks Oroboros for the encouragement. :)
Robin Wood does explain the AML quite well but I’m just too thick to understand- I don't have enough gray cells, anyway I’m not going to let that spoil my fun, I don’t have any client to please. :lol:
I’m trying another animation based on your animating materials tutorial – a ship moving, a little waves and the sun changing from daylight to sun down. I working each one separately and then I will combine them.
Guss- Thanks, animations are so cool and fun to do, you should try it.