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Check out my Modeling Objects in Carrara - Q&A - Come One and All thread. There are some great links there to help learn more about Carrara. Three that come to mind are...
Imagine my surprise when I checked out a link within Animation Exercises to try. I was going to relist Mikes list here and then some... lucky I saved all the different Levels mentioned while they still appeared.
Starting from the first level which is still listed I'm re-listing them all.
As stated in Mike's thread these are from http://www.animationlive.com. I have unlinked to "/51-great-animation-exercises-master/" since the link to it no longer works. I also tried the Contact Us link there to ask permission to re-publish these... it and some other links there do not work. I did check and the links to videos still works. That said... grab these while they exist as I may have to remove them or replace them with similar examples for each level.
Animation Exercises
Level 1 Exercises: Note that Level 1 is repeated as appears in Mike's thread Animation exercises to try. - where examples of each are shown
"Do not discount their simplicity! Here you have the principals of animation, which all other animation is built on. They are worth your time and effort."
Level 2 Exercises:
Level 3 Exercises:
Level 4 Exercises:
You might have noticed that each level listed gets a bit more detailed. Therefore I suggest tackling them progressively.
Please feel free to come up with other ideas. I'll be happy to add any that you wish or think should be included here.
q: where do I start?
a: Now you're just being silly. :) With the 1st level of course. Don't worry about doing each in order as listed... pick one and go Animate... always keep in mind that you can add you're own creativity to any. IE: I can easily have a brick fall and hit the ground... but you would want it to look realistic first... then perhaps you could have it also act in a cartoonish way, like a rubber brick or even glass that shatters... or have it act like a character and gather itself back into it's original position... Whoa that would be at least 3 exercises... exactly... you could even paste them together to show them all at once. You really must excuse my active imagination... I often get a bit carried away... I do believe that anything can be accomplished in Carrara... often it's easy even for me... but then I have a lot to learn yet. The more learned the easier it gets!
q: Do I have to do them all?
a: No. Do any that you want to and in any order you wish. Of course you don't have to do any but you should do something to gain the ability to do at least the first ones listed.
It is my desire to let others know that Animation is alive and well here in the DAZ forums... I want to get busy and do something to help this along. Mike, mmoir, PhilW, Dartanbeck, 3DAGE and many others have been inspirationlal and a huge help to me. I'll be adding a few short and very quick anims from time to time just to keep myself on a learning path... I'm hoping that future ones will be a bit longer and better than my previous examples.
A question I have for you is... What do you expect to find, see and learn here?
Animation is Funnnn! - Lets go Animate!
Oops... I should have mentioned "Don't let any of the excercises be daunting... if you run into problems and have questions just ask".
You can also try other sources to aid you. In order to get ideas you can simply type Animation or Animating a ball... well you get the idea... on Google, YouTube or wherever you prefer. Also you can check out the DAZ pay tutorials... perhaps even some elswhere or check out the links, which I'll be adding to from time to time.
Can I add a few notes?
- One of the most difficult aspects to get right is........timing.
- One way to get a better feel for timing is to act it out while counting - and count in half seconds (like a marching beat) and not seconds.
- There are lots of specific animation reference materials on the internet, as well as just video material - use them, study them. Not only to get your key positions but also for the timing.
- Once you have the main keys set up, run through it and if the preview is jerky do a quick test render, to check flow and timing, and adjust your keys to get the timing that you need. You may need to repeat until you get this right.
- Be your own critic, always ask "Does it look natural, how can I improve this".
I hope this helps.
P.S. The exercises are targetted at hand drawn animation - some of the exercises are a lot easier on a computer than their ranking would appear!
I just wanted to add a little bit about one important and pretty strange individual who had a significant effect on motion, animation and timing....
Eadweard Muybridge.
www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk
a great source for human and animal motion.
Phil you are welcome to add anthing at anytime.
Hope you don't mind if I mention some earlier in the "Excersises" section when I get some more time to edit it again. I did notice that some in different levels seemed to be awfully easy. Perhaps I should remove the division of "levels" and even the numbering of them... probably nearly anyone listing them out would place them differently... since I have limited experience with some things others seem hard to me at this time... I just need a bit more experience in some areas as well as more experience.
Good examples of poor timing are both the newer anims I've done above for examples... I should have spent a few days on each perfecting them both, I am my harsest critic and know where major problems lie. Even though I jumped from 4 to 6 secs neither seem quite long enough for me, IMO.
Speaking of references on animation... before doing the bouncing ball excersice for Mike I looked a numerous info for both 2D, 3D and live video to get a few ideas of how a bouncing ball acts/looks. I'd add a bunch but they would surely take up gobs of space... so best to only mention where and what to look for.
Thanks Andy... I've created a new catagory to my 2nd post... the links... for Ifluencental References and added the link you mentioned. I'll be adding more there also. I'm hoping to find a good link to cover Disney Animation if I can find one that covers some good details.
this link been floating in the forums for a few year http://floobynooby.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-cinematography-of-incredibles-part-1.html
FYI Folks: This months Carrara Challenge has an animation catagory... Carrara Challenge #34 - Sing to Me, Muse - WIP Thread.
Mistareeeeea, I added your link as there is quite a lot of useful info that anyone should know when creating stills, anims or video. A bunch of what I looked at refers to any images wether hand drawn or computer. To put it more simply... it refers to image composition.
A Bear Walk Cycle: This is a file, Bear Fur and Walk (Carrara - for Daz Bear), available from PhilW on ShareCG.
WalkCycleSampleDec8hnbk: Now here are a 5 different cycles, 4 walk and 1 run, for human figures. By mmoir. Note there are links on page 1 in my 2nd post which lead to mmoir's 3 part tutorial for creating a walk cycle. Creating a walk cycle in Carrara is the link to part 1. You will find the most recent works from mmoir at mr moir., but even mmoir's TimeToDraw2500 isn't very old.
DAZ Carrara Walk Cycle Animation Test: - by Carlos Alberto Noviski - an exaggerated walk cycle but very good.
The main thing that I wanted to point out is that there is apparent movement to the entire figures giving them all a realistic look. I've seen other walk cycles shown for Carrara and other programs which have problems. Some are a bit stiff and some too jerky. Note that even a robot can have some non stiff movement depending on it's design of course... that said even a robot should not have jerky motion except to accent that something is wrong with the poor thing. :) To see even more Carrara walk cycles go to YouTube and search for just that "Carrara Walk Cycle"
12 Principals of Animation: part 1 - (squash and stretch) at AlanBeckerTutorials - I've chosen this one to get you started... each principle is covered in less than 3mins... you can find these listed in various videos elsewhere also. Note that they are drawings but they all, I believe, apply to 3D also. Be sure to watch them all!... any animator should be aware of these... they apply to cartoon chars and realistic chars also, whether 2D or 3D.
The 12 Principles of Animation are really good to know - I base part of my Animation In Carrara tutorials on them and how they apply to 3D and Carrara in particular.
some Fuse figures from the free Steam app sent to Mixamo for autorigging
I made each figure's hip an animation group and on the motions which had no mesh and loaded those NLA clips on the rigged figures
Great... I've still not watched your Animation in Carrara tutorial... I've not wanted to accidentally repeat anything you mention word for word... and yet I've just noticed that even the beginning of the title of this thread repeats the title of your tutorial... should I rename it to Animating in Carrara -..... instead?
Back in the 90's I leaned a lot just from reading the manual for Disney Animation Studio... it mentioned either most or all of the 12 Principles of Animation which I believe were established as rules for Disney animators early on... probably even before or as Mickey Mouse showed up.
Wendy, looks very good indeed. Tell me is Mixamo a free service or pay? I ask since it is Adobe after all.
Now I'm confused a bit... can you have more than one animation group per character or is only one required.
TIP: I thought I knew what an animation group was but didn't... not surprising to me. :) Diomede had run into the same problem... luckily he took the time to find out and has added an explanation with examples of a normal group as opposed to an animation group. Find it HERE in the present Carrara Challenge... Be sure to look back for more information about it... his problem and road to discovery.
havebt tried a serious go at mimic, only dabbled a bit
I just got it very recently... don't even have a microphone for the computer yet.
yes still free but not going to be up much longer, in fact not checked for a week.
not sure what happens after that
I did not install Adobe cloud as my two attempts it wanted to stick Fuse on my C drive in spite of changing my paths in settings.
I cannot do that as it's a tiny SSD.
So only using Steam version which also exports obj for those wanting to rig them themselves.
I have done so attaching a skeleton.
I meant I created multiple NLA clips from the various FBX imports of the motion files.
They are just bones no mesh but same rigging as the figures.
and yes an animation group is created under the animation tab not the edit tab
Crazy John's Mini-Tuts: Moving Multiple Keyframes
While you can move each keyframe individually it is often helpful to move more than one at a time. The following pics should explain and show you how this can be done. Please let me know if you have any questions or I need to change anything for clarity or anything else.
Warning - Tip: The AVI player in Carrara's Render room is messed up, at least for me. I set it to loop and hit Play button... each time it loops a different unwanted result shows. It also doesn't play properly with loop off. What to Do: Close the player window and open the file with a different Player and everything was should work fine... ohhh... what a relief that was to find out. "This is an edited version of what I noted in Mike's Bouncing ball exercise #5, linked to on page 1."
Converting to other formats: I use AVS4YOU. It appears to convert nearly anything video, audio and more. While there are other programs available I can attest to it's ease of use. Note that you can either convert between formats but also build from individual frames. You can subscribe per year or get an unlimited license... needless to say I have the latter.
Please feel free to list other animation tools, video converters or editing programs. Perhaps I'll create a separate catagory or page for them.
Visualize, Setup and Experiment: Before you even setup an animation know what you are wanting to show. What do you want to convey... or what story would you like to tell. I keep a text file called Animation Ideas where I'll jot down what I'm wanting to do... first I'll jot down an outline of the where I want it to start, where I want to end up... then I'll figure out what I want to happen between the the beginning and end... Other times the middle will occur to me first or I'll pretty much know what the entire thing will be. The important part is to jot down what I want... after all I can always go in later and add ideas... change how things will happen or re-act. I like to keep the original ideas just to know what I started with even though it might change into something entirely different. Guess you might even call this a script of sorts.
Still before the animation gets started in setup I will usually... well nearly always... model the actors which are objects... if they are figures, human or otherwise, I'll use existing ones someone else modeled... even some objects might be existing ones, either mine or someone else's. I do prefer to have at least a few of my own... makes it more unique in a way.
Ok... time for Setup and Experimentation. You can start setup at anytime... just don't get too carried away until you know where your going... you will be wasting time if later you toss out things that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Once you have the contents inserted into a scene you can start with adding keyframes where you want changes to occur. As you place the keyframes and make adjustments use the scrubber to see if it's looking correct then go to the play bar and play the entire thing through... I'll set it to loop in order to not play it over and over manually. Once you have timing and movement adjusted where they look good to you... Save It.
In the animation below by 3DAGE you will notice that he is basically doing one thing over and over but changing things each time. He is changing camera angles, number of actors, clothing, how they act even when falling as well as how the explosion effects work each time. I'm sure he is checking other things also. I would call this Experimentation since you want to end up with the best look for where you were headed from the beginning. Be sure to check out 3dagedesign on YouTube to see some of his other tests and work.
futzing in sony vegas all day. giving another go at the howie secret lake. rendering a new track with higher settings
One thing to notice in the 3Dage clip above is how fast some of the cuts are - and hence how short some of the animated clips are, some just a few frames long. If you want to avoid long rendering sessions that won't eventually be used, you need to plan everything out quite meticulously, storyboarding can be useful for this to play with ideas, camera angles, etc before you even touch the computer. A lot of animated stuff seems to have very long clips all the time, but this is not how most films/programmes are put together.
sony 11 rendered png series as a slide show dunno why
duuhhhh whisky tango
was an option tick box hidden under windows task bar, check to import as sequential files
back to work lol
Thanks for pointing that out Phil. That explains why it appeares a bit quick.
I was thinking an acceptable way to do as 3DAGE did in that clip would be to set up the first short test frames first... then one could simply copy those keyframes and place them after the end of the first one... then work on the 2nd sequence... then doing the same for 2nd bunch of keyframes... each time making your changes. Note that you will need to set the yellow end marker so the longer sequence knows where to end. Also Note to use Drag Select to select your keyframes then Alt Drag to copy and move the keyframes all at once.
Doing it that way would avoid needing to save a different files for each version. As with anything I would save a new version of the entire sequence under new name(s), _01b etc, in order to have a earlier version to fall back on should anything get messed up.
If anyone has checked out "Extras or The Making of... insert any film or animation" the good examples will show a Storyboard of certain scenes, rather quick sketches, and not the keyframe scenes or even "in-between" scenes"... they may show only where action changes and nothing else. I considered them a visualized very condensed version of a script, story, film or animation. Some examples of different storyboards are at Pixar-Animation.weebley.com. There are plenty of good examples elsewhere also. Anyone who can draw even stick figures can make a storyboard. But why am I mentioning storyboards?? Well I don't draw that much except on the computer, a good place to create storyboards. But I don't even bother with them... I consider keyframes similar to a storyboard. However a storyboard element or drawing can convey more than a keyframe... but you can also do this with a render of the scene... then in an image editor add text, arrows... anything you need. Note your render doesn't have to be of excellent quality so render it without any functions which cause longer render times.
looks better if yoo can d/l it at the 720 res
how do you keep track of the "takes"?
take # scene #
especially is hard comin back to something a year later
Not bad atall. I have a slow connection... it downloads very fast, no waiting. I wonder why some sections, especially woods, are blurred at times?... Is this on my end? I even put my glasses on and viewed it a few more times.
what do you do to record your character;s dialog?
installing screaming bee is just the start.
ambient noise.
Clint Eastwood not available for voice work lol. / elderly gents
dont have a recording studio
ty
is better than it was, to the point ise happy with it. wll have to cull some those trees. minotaurs coming through