Animation in Carrara - Let's Animate - Q&A - Come One & All

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  • Steve KSteve K Posts: 3,226

    This book also comes to mind, especially Chapters 1,2, & 10.  (Check the "Look Inside" for some excerpts):

    https://www.amazon.com/Master-Shots-Vol-Directors-Breakthrough/dp/1615931546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503017100&sr=8-1&keywords=master+shots+3

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited August 2017

    Am I confused or just Crazy John. :)  I'm mixing up setting up a camera for the opening shot which will have animatinion it afterwards.  I'd not realized that all or most of the other moves when setting up for either a still or anim opening are being used  I know better... whenever the controls, in the left tool bar are used the camera changes position(s).

    I can picture this like the camera guy, or crew, taking the camera to the shooting location and setting it up for that opening shot.  Luckily in Carrara an other 3D programs we don't have any actual tracks or anything needed to mount the camera on.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    I've added a few more links to animation related threads... you can find them HERE.  I also made other changes to spiff things up and add descriptions to some.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Solar Eclipse Challenge:  Did you see the Solar Eclipse?... would you like to animate it?  If so please show us the anim here, object names/settings/keyframe view would be nice too.  I nearly started one after thinking about how to do it and may still.  At the moment I'm in the middle of 2 other things and thinking about starting something else.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Here is a thought... how about on a planet with more than 1 moon?

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311

    moving planets (sphere's) can actually be pretty simple in Carrara,. ......no complex animation required.

    create a couple of sphere's ,. set them some distance apart and scale as required,.

    if you want one,. or more,. orbiting another,.

    Create a few Target Helper Objects (one for each planet) at the centre of your scene (or main planet) ,. parent the sphere's to those THO's,.

    then add a spin modifier to the Target Helper Objects.

    you can change the spin direction with negative values

    By parenting a small sphere to a target helper Object,. then parenting that to a big sphere,. you'll create an orbiting moon.

    If you create another sphere,. or another target helper object,. ..you could parent the planet with it's orbiting moon to that

    there's also some nice "solar system" example scenes with carrara,.  although the planet's aren't animated.

    worth checking out the shaders/texture maps.

     

     

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Yes very easy... question folks should consider is which moves faster Sun or Moon and do they move in the same direction. Right about textures they come with Carrara Pro don't know about Std.

    Check out this pic at Space.com for example.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    Moving the spheres around is relatively easy, the thing that would be most challenging would be to get the lighting & effects looking right and to have something for the sun's corona. A quick and easy way to do that would be to map a photo of the sun's corona during an eclipse onto a plane, but you may consider that to be cheating!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Would you even need spheres?...  wondering if only circular disk would be enough... Nawww... spheres better to show shadows and curvature... animating those are piece of cake.  "TMap of corona"... I don't consider that cheating at all.  I was thinking about experimenting with some of Carrara's Effects since the fun with them is not just Enabling them... their power is in the Edit button... some have a lot of options that I've not learnt all yet.  Also even more effects available for lighting... might fade in a plain for the dark sky and project light on only part of it... thinking one with Falloff, Turbulence, Disturbance and more that I don't remember name of right now, Carrara not open so can't peek at moment.

    Hey fellow Carrara animators... I'm not going to do an eclipse anytime soon just thinking and suggestion, what I can.  At the moment I'm putting efforts into a project... likely an Anim using things I've only watched but not experimented with for the Carrara Challenge 35 - Tribute to Cripeman - Kapow - WIP Thread.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited October 2017

    I just added this to the into, 1st post, on page 1.

    q:  Can I add actual video I take to a Carrara Animation?
    a:  Yes of course.  I've seen it done but haven't tried yet.  You can also incorporate more than 1 animation together... perhaps as a background, tv/monitor, moving pictures anims in frames/etc.. etc.

    "Please let me know if any part of my "answer" is wrong.

    Oh... feel free to elaborate.  Since I've not done this yet I'm sure other folks may not either.  I'm thinking that this could be done on a plane or even other... preferably VM or even a default plane etc.

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964
    edited August 2017

    Greetings I have an animate question :)

    Well it's a deanimate question.

    I have a complicate scene with 4 or five m4s and v4s, = most have clothes draped with VWD - the aim was to get a still render at the 4 second mark. Which I have.

    I need to do an animation with a moving camera but keep the rest of the scene still - but some of the many objects are still moving after the 4 second mark.

    I wondered if there was a way to lock all the objects (except the camera) so they freeze at the 4 second mark?

    I guess I could start deleting keyframes but I never seem to be able to burrow far anough into the seequence structure to get them all.

    I started looking through the manual but thought it would be easier to ask !

     

    thanks in advance

     

    note to self  see page 659

     

    .
     

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    @Andrew: You duplicate the firsts keyframes (Alt/ drag) until the 4th second but take care to use a linear tweener!

    @John: I use to utilize a footage as texture but in uncompressed .avi, a compressed .avi (Windows) never work for me...

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    Deleting any subsequent keyframes is really the answer, you can just drag out a box to select lots at once.

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,964

    thanks Dudu and Phil :)

     

     

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    it seems that I was too quickly to read the question, Phil is right, delete the keyframes is the way to go. It's about 30°C here and my internal translator is in overheating! angry

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    I have also a question (afflicted if there is already an answer in this thread, but I do not have the time to read everything): I make all my animations only by creating keyframes while working with the manipulators but a lot uses a “target helper”, I would like to know how it goes exactly, for example for animation of a character with contraints.
    Thank you.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    Sorry Dudu, I'm not sure that I understand your question?

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    A lot of people use a target helper to animate something, I tried to do it with an exemple of EvilProducer wich animate a character on a bike and I had no succes in this case (the limits of the feets were brocken all the time).

    I wonder what is the advantage of this technic relative to the tradional manipulations, and what was wrong in my test with the EP' scene?

    Sorry, I don't find this scene at the moment.

    Cheers!

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    A bit of background:

    - when you move for example the thigh of a leg, the lower leg (shin) is also moved, as is the foot. This seems obvious. It is called Forward Kinematics, because a move of one bone in the hierarchy then affects the position of bones further down the hierarchy.

    - The opposite of the above is when you move for example the foot and the thigh and shin are moved in order to keep everything connected.  This is Inverse Kinematics or IK, because the influence is moving up the hierarchy and not down it.  This is often used with a Target Helper, so that the foot (or whatever) tracks the Target. It also requires constraints to be turned on, otherwise the foot could just float off and become disconnected to the rest of the leg!

    So in your character on a bicycle example, you want the feet to track the pedals as they turn - you could do this using Forward Kinematics, but it would be very tedious and error prone to do it that way - you would need to individually adjust the thigh, shin and foot angles to make the foot exactly end up on the pedal for every frame, and if you get it even slightly wrong, the foot will appear to waver and wobble and appear not to be connected to the pedal.

    Hence using IK for this purpose - attach a Target Helper to the pedal and use this as a target for the IK in the leg, which should be set up to affect from the foot to the shin and thigh (but not the hip). Once set up, the motion will automatically adjust the angles and the foot will be firmly planted on the pedal, with much less work.

    Another common use is for standing and walking. In the standing example, the feet remain firmly planted on the ground, even when you move the hip around, which would normally move the whole figure, including the legs, around.  And in walking, it ensures that there is no foot slippage.

    IK is most often useful on the legs for this type of movement, but you can use it for arms too as and when the situation demands - but for freely moving arms, you would not need it.

    I hope this helps.

    As to why it did not work for you, I am not sure, but you could check that the constraints on the limbs are set up appropriately as this will affect the type of movement that you end up with.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    head wax said:

    Greetings I have an animate question :)

    Well it's a deanimate question.

    I have a complicate scene with 4 or five m4s and v4s, = most have clothes draped with VWD - the aim was to get a still render at the 4 second mark. Which I have.

    I need to do an animation with a moving camera but keep the rest of the scene still - but some of the many objects are still moving after the 4 second mark.

    I wondered if there was a way to lock all the objects (except the camera) so they freeze at the 4 second mark?

    I guess I could start deleting keyframes but I never seem to be able to burrow far anough into the seequence structure to get them all.

    I started looking through the manual but thought it would be easier to ask !

    Andrew,  If I understand right you already have a keyframe at 4 sec mark... if not you can add a keyframe there simply with the Add Keyframe icon first drag the Scrubber there.  Phil seem to have beat me to the answer.  I would have suggested highlighting all the keyframes after the one a 4 sec... all will be frozen afterwards. smiley

    Oh... for the camera movement I'd just create the target helper for the Camera to point at your generation 4 chars/scene area while its moving.  Oh gee... ya didn't ask about that so likely already know. surprise

    DUDU said:
    @John: I use to utilize a footage as texture but in uncompressed .avi, a compressed .avi (Windows) never work for me...

    Thanks DUDU,  I've added to save as Uncompressed .avi to my answer on page 1.  LOL... I'm not even close to being a fan of .avi for numerous reasons.  For some reason the Carrara .AVI player does not work properly... playing a file once seems to have errors... each time it loops the points at which errors occur are different.  However when loaded with other players it still has errors but not as bad... I found out that simply loading the file and saving in another format like .wmv worked fine.  Never thought about saving as .avi from my conversion tool, AVS4YOU.

     

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited August 2017

    Are you speaking of an IK Target helper, see Mike's video below, or a normal Target helper.  I've used the latter before for pointing Camera(s) and/or Lights at.  I suspect that an IK target helper is only used for anything with an IK Chain while a Target helper is multi-purpose and has many uses... right?


    mmoir states that this is not an actual tutorial.  For me it was since I'd never set up an IK Target Helper.
     

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,144

    You can use either - an IK target helper is created by the Create IK Chain tool, but you can also manually set up the IK and have it follow a normal Target Helper, so I'm not sure in practice there is a real difference.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945

    Thank you Phil, I'll work on this the next week-end and I'm sure that I will have more questions about that.

    Thank you very much!

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Thanks Phil.

    Regarding IK Target helpers... I imagine ttat I'd have full contol over it same as a Target helper.... Move, Scale and Rotate?  Silly me I could just load figure and create one to find out. :)

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    For anyone considering a Total Eclipse animation:  PBS is airing info and pics of it which inlude the Aura and other things that need SFX.  On your DVR or Cable etc search feature check out Nova program on 9.1 or 9.3, unless diff in your area... you will see the word Eclipse early in the description/info for the show... it airs until the end of this month if not longer, my DVR only lists about 2+ weeks.

    I've saved the program and am considering doing an anim for practice... sometime in the future.

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634
    edited August 2017

    Would partical Emmiters alone be considered Animation?  I'm wondering if I should add them here as a catagory or create/look-for a thread about them.  I'm sure that they could be included by moving them for various effects in a traditional animation.


    I've updated forum links... just added Rigging-Animating within a animation find it HERE on page 1..

    Post edited by wgdjohn on
  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311

    Anything that moves, or changes from one frame to the next,. is considered animation :)

    In the old forums,. there was a thread about particles,.loads of nice things,. i think maybe all lost now.

    Dimention theory and Sub7th did a bunch of really nice particle sims

    you can also set an object to be the emitter,. or a shading domain on an object,.

     

    Also,. in another thread,. you' were asking about parenting,.

    you got it,. :)

    you simply drag one object onto another in the scene instance list,. that will add that object your dragging as a child of the object you're dropping it onto.

     

  • wgdjohnwgdjohn Posts: 2,634

    Cool... 2 answers in one. :)  Thanks Andy

    You said "you can also set an object to be the emitter,. or a shading domain on an object."  Someone please tell me how.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125

    I modeled a spaceship.  I created a shading domain called engine squares.  I put the square polygons inside the engines facing outward.  In the particle emitter modeler, I selected the shading domain engine square.

    aa01 animation group.JPG
    1579 x 921 - 161K
    aa02b animation model shading domain engine squares.jpg
    1604 x 878 - 229K
    aa03b particle emittter engine square chosen.jpg
    739 x 992 - 133K
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,125

     

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