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Hehe, Savage :lol: :lol: :lol:
@mermaid: I will consider myself duly chastened, in both your latest animations and being off topic. I like your last ball animation the best, it had the best fluid motion. I once used an 8mm camera to create a stop action movie. I was working at a Boys Club at the time, and had a kid sit on the gym floor while I filmed him for 5-10 seconds; I don't remember the exact time. I then had him move so that he sat where his heels had been and filmed him again. I had him repeat this sit and move setup several times, including adding the closed door to the gym office in the mix. I got the timing right because when the film was developed, it looked like this kid was moving along the floor, through a closed door, out a brick wall, and collided with a volleyball standard. I timed each filming just right so that enough frames were used to produce a smooth fluid motion when the film was viewed. If I'm not mistaken, it's the same principal with animation. Not enough frames and movement looks jerky, too many and it can be sluggish or too repetitive. (see, I can get back on topic) :-)
Guss- No don't feel that way, I was only kidding. :) Did you really get a kid to do all these poses for you? I was never good at taking photos and my better half is quite amused by my devotion to Bryce and now trying to do animations. I loved doing them in Photoshop but Bryce Animation is awesome. I hope Oro will make a few more videos. :-)
I second you on this. I’m so glad I decide to join the forum. Hope to see some of your Bryce animations soon. ;)
@mermaid: Yep, I there was a kid who was willing to work with me. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I only knew for things to look right that kids' position had to be just right. And I needed to allow enough frames to run in order to have a smooth output. If I had it on CD I'd post it for all to see, but it's still on 8mm film. I probably could take it to Wally world and get put on a CD, but haven't taken the time to look into it.
Watching all of these animations has started giving me an itch, and ideas are already starting to form. I may have to break down and jump in with both feet.
Guss- Waiting for you and others to join the fun
Can someone help me improve this animation? I will work on the sky/lighting later.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120757334815/
I wonder why there is a problem with the gif file format ...???
That's a great idea you got there Mermaid. :-)
An improvement could be made in the speed of flight of the ball as it bounces between the two dolphins, it really needs to bounce quickly off the dolphin's nose and then slow down a lot more before the other dolphin hits it back (Imagining it's an inflatable beach ball). And just a bit more movement of the dolphins to make it look like they're really hitting it to each other... But it looks great!.
That's a great idea you got there Mermaid. :-)
An improvement could be made in the speed of flight of the ball as it bounces between the two dolphins, it really needs to bounce quickly off the dolphin's nose and then slow down a lot more before the other dolphin hits it back (Imagining it's an inflatable beach ball). And just a bit more movement of the dolphins to make it look like they're really hitting it to each other... But it looks great!.
That's the effect I am trying to get, but I don't know how to get it even after watching Oro's video a few times. I don't really understand the AML. Maybe (fingers crossed) Oro will make a few more. Thanks for your comment Dave.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
That's brilliant :) Thanks for the chuckle, Mermaid :D
I have trouble with the word 'improve', because it's not specific, and it involves me reading minds: what's an improvement in the eyes of an artist? Should it be slowed down, sped up, brighter, blurrier, crazier, more lifelike, less lifelike?
What would you consider an improvement, Mermaid? What is it about this scene that you think needs more attention? Your ability to describe your scene and its intentions will help you in future creations.
(I think I know the answer, and can sum it up in one word, but I'd like you to find it.)
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
That's brilliant :) Thanks for the chuckle, Mermaid :D
I have trouble with the word 'improve', because it's not specific, and it involves me reading minds: what's an improvement in the eyes of an artist? Should it be slowed down, sped up, brighter, blurrier, crazier, more lifelike, less lifelike?
What would you consider an improvement, Mermaid? What is it about this scene that you think needs more attention? Your ability to describe your scene and its intentions will help you in future creations.
(I think I know the answer, and can sum it up in one word, but I'd like you to find it.)
The 1st thing that I find incorrect, I was aiming for a pendulum loop throughout the animation but after the last frame, the ball jumps back to the left dolphin.
I could not get the dolphins to jump up to hit the ball, at the right moment, the sequence is off here.
And thirdly I was aiming for the speed as Dave mentioned – bounce quickly off the dolphin’s nose and then slow down a bit before the 2nd dolphin hits it.
The lighting I'm not worried about as i will work on it later.
Is this what you figured Oro, I'm curious to know the one word you can sum it up with. :)
That's ACE territory - More about that later.
Timing.
But before I get started, this is worth re-stating: COLLISION SIMULATIONS ARE HARD IN BRYCE! Simple collisions can be done and they can look great, but if you're wondering if the reason you're finding this simulation difficult is between "I'm Dumb" or "This is Hard", the answer is "THIS IS HARD"! :)
This vid tackles the dolphin scenario. It's an informal, rambling monologue and almost twice as long as my scripted tutorials, but it covers a lot of ground:
Dolphin Scenario
1) Shifting (offsetting) loop timing
2) ACE curves & corners
3) Empties (hidden objects) and their incredible ability to shortcut complex animations
4) Adjusting ticker marks
5) Exporting Working Ranges
The timing of my final product could still use some tweaking, but in showing you how to individually adjust ticker marks and ranges of ticker marks, I'm hoping you'll be empowered to adjust the timing of any scenario to a very fine degree.
Bryce or 3D animation is difficult but it's more fun to do compared to 2D animation.
Thanks for the video and comments.
In his tutorial on AML-Basic, Oro said he was insane to do Simulating Collision physics in Bryce, well I was doubly insane to try it.
Basically I followed the method Oro explained in his video Dolphin Scenario, I did not get the curve for the Ball as he suggested so I went with the default straight line. I had to work the Keyframes a bit too, because a dolphin as a nose. ;)
It’s not perfect but I’ll say pretty cool. A Big Thank You Oro
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120757390254/
Woo, lookit all that action! Offset water, a spotlight tracking the ball, dolphins on LSD, IT'S ALL ON! Great effort Mermaid... Though you did cheat on the dolphins by having them both rise at the same time at EACH collision, rather than allternate collisions :)
I think the next KEY-FLAME tute will be about timing in the AML. For your dolphins, you just needed to slide the second dolphin's ticker marks along to the right... But I don't know by how much: that's a secret between you and your Bryce file :) But yes, collisions do take a bit of practice for a couple of reasons. The first is that Bryce Trajectories have easing built into every keyframe point. That's generally why your ball seems to be slowing down before it gets to a dolphin. It's a pain. There are two ways to remove easing: Aggressive curves in the AML, or turning the trajectory into a path, neither of which is particularly elegant.
@Oroboros: Great off the cuff video.
Oro- thanks, I had to cheat, no choice ;) When I move the tickers for the right dolphin as per the video, the right dolphin misses the ball. I even tried setting the Keyframes for the dolphins individually, but your hidden object method worked best. I also had problems finding a suitable working range. All in all I learnt a lot.
Since I started doing David’s and Horo’s video tutorials and now your Key-Flame tutorials, what can I say, except learning Bryce, whether it’s DTE, setting a scene or animations its all fun, a fun-filled learning experience.
Thanks once again, looking forward to your next tutorial.
You're progressing at a frightening rate, mermaid. Collision simulations really are the testing ground for sharpening animation skills on a frame-by-frame level. But I think I've identified three more vids I can do that cover off the rest of Bryce animation, or at least present enough tools to consider animation covered well:
Timing (AML pt 2: Manipulating ticker marks, More on the ACE, working ranges, scaling output)
Empty Camera Tracking (Creating camera rigs, basic camera operation)
The Hidden Horrors: Tips, DTE manipulations, Paths, Output
Many of these subjects can been kinda covered in the Dolphin Scenario and the Porthole Study, but they're worth a more structured presentation of the toolsets involved.
@Oroboros: I understand you want a more polished look for your KEY-FLAME videos, but sometimes those not so polished provide information left out of the polished version. Plus, the personality of the maker shows through a bit more.
I followed a tutorial and made a Chain Wheel using Wings 3D, animated it, but don't know any place I can upload it for viewing by others. Any one have a suggestion? I tried Photobucket but for some reason the video won't upload--I tried using IE 10 and Opera; Opera has the extensions necessary to use on Photobucket.
Looking forward to these videos. :)
I replied to your Pm.
I think you can upload directly to YouTube, make an account there.I have not tried it yet but one can upload Avi files to YouTube.
Maybe you can try this site, I have not tried it yet maybe for my next animation
http://www.online-convert.com/
@mermaid: Thank you, I'll look into it.
Open an account with YouTube as has been said. The only thing you have to be aware of is using copyrighted music if you add any to the video. There is also a way to make the videos private if you don't want everyone to see them. You then send the video address to those people you want to view it.
I have two different channels on there :)
I don't think I'll need to open a You Tube account because I spent most of yesterday and today figuring out how to post a video on Pinterest.
Because Pinterest doesn't use .AVI format, this has to be converted to a file format that can be used. NCH Software is a site I found which has a file converter which I used to convert the .AVI file to .GIF. (I used the free version, which might be a trial version after all) I kept getting an error message every time I tried uploading the .GIF file. So I went hunting for reasons why this error was showing up and found two people who solved this problem by reducing the side of the image.
So I went back and resized the file using the file converter, but with disastrous results. If the file converter couldn't resize the file without disastrous results then I'd have to do it in Bryce. I loaded the file, resized the render and document size, reanimated both the object and material and rendered it. Then it was back to Pinterest and see if it would upload without the error message showing up.
And here is the link to my Chain Gear , my first attempt at animation. I'm not real happy how the material looks as the gear rotates, but for the first attempt, it ain't too bad if I say so myself. ;-)
Welcome to Bryce Animation Guss. :cheese: The Chain Gear is cool. When I did the Cow jumps over the Moon animation, Oro mentioned that the material for moving objects should be mapped Object Space.
Sometimes I think it is better to use YouTube for our animations as this way we are losing quality. My Avi files are normally quite big around 200-300MB and when I get the Gif back its around 7-8 MB
Are you going to post your other work on Pinterest? If yes we can follow each other, that will be so cool. ;)
Hopefully one day I will get round to working on my Gallery here.
Great first attempt, Guss...sorry to say it...but you're 'hooked' now on Bryce animation ;) Looking forward to more works.
Jay
mermaid010
The .avi files are uncompressed 24 bit colour video files but .gif is a series of 8 bit 256 colour images so the size and quality will suffer.
I use this as a quick way of compressing and saving my videos for different applications. I usually use the .mp4 for iPad so that it works everywhere.
http://www.any-video-converter.com/download/
Below is the download page. The download will start automatically from this page. Double click the .exe file to install. During the installation don't just keep clicking the next button there is a page asking you to install Lynkey, choose custom installation on this page and untick the two boxes before clicking next. Lynkey wont be installed if you do this.
http://www.any-video-converter.com/download-avc-free.php
You just add the videos to be converted; choose the output; click convert.
@mermaid: I'm not sure, yet, where I'll put any other animations I make. Uploading animations is new to me so I'm not sure what site(s) would be the best. Pinterest won't take anything large, file wise, since the server times out to soon--I kept getting error code 503 before I decreased the size of my Chain Gear .Gif image. Plus, Pinterest is limited on the file extensions accepted. It'd be extra work every time converting .Avi to .Gif it I used Pinterest. The Chain Gear .Avi file is 242 MB, same size image but .Gif is around 30, but still takes too long uploading to Pinterest before the server times out. As to following each other on Pinterest, that'd be neat, if I could figure out how it's done. Their help site leaves a lot to be desired.
@Jay: Yeeeaaahhh...I think you're right. I've already ideas swirling around in the ol' gray matter which might come to fruition. If I can figure out how to make the objects I'm thinking about.
@Sandy: Thank you for the link, I found something on that site the other day when I was hunting for a file converter. I'll give that converter a try and see if I like it better than Prism.
Here is the link to my edited Chain Gear which uses Object Spacing mapping instead of the default World Space. This is another lesson I learned on my first attempt, and have many more to learn.
Regarding animation files: On the Internet, there are basically three types of animation files: Vector-based (Flash, dynamic HTML/CSS/JavaScript, etc.), GIFs, and movies.
The 'art' of GIF 89a format animations is to keep them small, and use the least amount of frames required to portray movement. As mentioned previously, your palette will be limited to 256 colors. Dithering to a 256 palette will kill complex materials, turning them into flickering, messy pixels. So avoid images with lots of colors or patterns.
Another way to reduce GIF size is using shorter loops. Guss, your cog repeats after one full rotation. This isn't necessary. Your 12-tooth cog is symmetrical about 30° increments. Nothing else moves, so after your cog rotates 7 frames... That's it. Animation finished. Persistence of vision will create the rest of the illusion that the cog is rolling around... Provided you get rid of the tell-tale material on the cog, or use a mapping mode which is also symmetrical about the rotational axis in 30° increments. (Personally, for GIFs... I'd lose the material altogether :) )
Movies are easier (and harder) to deal with. The easy bit is that there are several outlets for web video like YouTube and Vimeo. The hard bit is learning compression, not because certain video portals only take specific types (most of them will take anything), but because you have far better things your computer can do with it's time than send hundreds of megabytes of video data to a portal (like YouTube) when you only have to send sometimes 40-60% of that amount and still have great looking video.
Bryce's export options are pretty old, but PC users want to export to .AVI, and Mac Users want to export to Animation. These are lossless compression formats, and are useful as master copies. These are huge files. Once I have mine done I run them through MPEG Streamclip, one of a number of file conversion utilities, and convert it to an MP4 using H.264 compression at about 70%. For a KEY-FLAME tutorial, this generally takes a 2GB (that's right, GIGABYTE) file down to about 120MB. That's the file I send to YouTube, and then YouTube makes various downscaled versions of it.
@Oroboros: Being new to animation, any information is good to have and helpful. But only if I fully understand how it's applied. My first animated object was created in a way which was easy for me to figure out; 24 frames, 1 quarter rotation, 11 frames per 1/8 rotation. Being new to this area I didn't think about symmetry because I didn't know it was something to consider. Or that it was possible to use fewer frames to simulate an object completing a full revolution.
And this is that area where I don't fully understand, using fewer frames to simulate one full revolution. Now that you've mentioned symmetry I can see my gear looks the same, without material, at any given point on the wheel. But how do I take advantage of this within just 7 frames? Do I set up my key frames as I did in my original, dividing the rotation into degrees which fit within those 7 frames? Is your KEY-FLAME video about planetary rotation applicable to this?
It would be nice to upload smaller files, and not have to wait several minutes for something huge to upload. I'd like to read more about converting files to MP4 and other formats to see which is more advantageous. I found Prism, which seems to be free at the moment, with options to purchase, so I'll have to see which conversion formats it supports. I also downloaded the one Sandy mentioned, which I know can convert to MP4. Time will tell what I'll end up doing, I've so much to learn.
I changed the material on my Chain Gear and I think this material looks much better.
Guss - For now I think I will continue to use Pinterest for my animation. I like the material you used on the last one.
Oro - thanks for the additional info.
Fishtales - thanks for the links I will have a look at them when I am ready for YouTube ;)
@mermaid: Thank you. That material seemed to work much better with rotation. I may continue using Pinterest also, for the time being, at least until I get my feet wetter.