Animation - Software

[daveindezmenez]

(These first messages of mine are also posted in Production - just wanted to get this forum going.)

I've been investigating ways of doing animation more recently using a computer and here are some things I've found out about that are fairly inexpensive:

Quicktime Pro

For around $30 you can buy the key that will turn your Quicktime (http://www.quicktime.com) into Quicktime Pro. This unlocks a lot of features. The one related to animation is "Open Image Sequence". You can have a series of still pictures stored in a folder and under the File menu you can choose "Open Image Sequence". The dialog box will have a place to set your frame rate. Once you have the images open it is a simple matter to go ahead and save it as a Quicktime movie or in some format where you can import it into an editing program in order to add sound. I usually set the frame rate to 12fps which is the equivalent of shooting on "twos" on film. Your source images can either be created on the computer or taken with your digital still camera. The resolution for use in standard definition video is 640x480.

Claymation Studio

I just picked up really cheap animation software at Target the other day for $20. I'm having problems getting it to work on my PC because of some software conflict which I hope to get resolved but it did work on my brother's computer. What Claymation Studio does is assist you with shooting stop motion animation. The documentation is terrible but I was able to find out how it works via a video someone had made on youtube (How to use honestech Claymation Studio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OvhKZ8omk). The software will capture your frames as you shoot them and has features to assist you with this. It has an onion skin feature which will allow you to see your previous frame as you adjust your figure for the next one. You can rotoscope pre-existing footage if you want to use the movements in live action footage. Once the footage is shot, you can copy and paste frames for repetitive movements (walk cycles, etc.). If your figures are shot against a solid color background it has a chroma key feature where you can insert backgrounds behind your animation. If I can get it working on my PC I may try it.

Anim8or

I've been looking for cheap 3D animation software to learn with. Everything I'd run into so far had either been not related to character animation (which is what I'm really interested in) or had been for other purposes (still images, CAD, etc.) or had been way too expensive or complicated (Poser, Carrara, Maya, etc.). I just wanted to animate without all the complicated extra stuff. My interest in 3D animation software was that you could animate without worrying about figures falling over (clay animation), without buying huge amounts of materials (cel animation and animation on paper), or have to devote a corner of a room to it and have to worry about it being disturbed. I finally found something that looks like it might work and the price is right. It is free. The software is called Anim8or http://www.anim8or.com and it can do character animation but it doesn't have all the complications of the expensive stuff. I'm thinking it might be possible to animate with it and then turn it over to friends with the more sophisticated stuff to add all the textures, bump maps, lighting effects, etc. to make it look good.

Flash

I've only begun to explore Flash and the big advantage to it is that it is vector based and will do tweening (creating the frames between the key positions in "key frames"). I've seen somewhere that it is possible to output to video resolution and frame rate files but I haven't checked it out enough yet to tell you. It has a lot of extra stuff in it that wouldn't relate to filmmaking type animation but would rather relate to the web. I've got mixed feelings about it so far since most of the animations I've seen on the web are fairly crude and I would be more after something of a more professional level. The jury is out as far as I'm concerned with this one until I can figure it out and try to make it do something.

[daveindezmenez]

A little update on Claymation Studio. I got it to work on my PC. It turned out that the drivers for my ATI All-In-Wonder X600 Pro video card was the culprit. I installed a different video card and the software now works.

The only reason I had the All-In-Wonder video card was because I wanted a way to import old analog video into the computer. Since I purchased the new camcorder, this point is now moot. I vaguely remembered hearing of problems with these cards and since my brother had a video card sitting in his closet, I decided to give swapping the video card a shot.

The problem it had was once you were past the box giving you tips on how to use the program, nothing would respond in the software - no buttons, no menus, nothing. You couldn't even quit the program. You had to use the handy control-alt-delete to force it to quit.

[daveindezmenez]

Nathos wrote:

Solid state recording video cameras could potentially be ready-made for stop motion animation. Was looking at my EX1, was surprised to see someone had put a little bit of thought into a stop motion feature set. Programmable number of frames captured per record button press (produces a video clip as you "snap" frames). Freeze/blend mode that is assignable to a camera button so you can overlay the last frame in the clip over live image. I don't know if it lets you adjust number of captured frames in the middle of a clip (i.e. switch from animating on twos to ones briefly), maybe if I suddenly fall in a big puddle of free time, I'll dink with it a bit.

I'd be interested in learning what you find out. Free time is at a premium right now or else I'd look into it myself. The nice thing about this Claymation Studio program, other than being cheap, is that it is tailored for stop-motion animation. The only thing it isn't set up for though is high-definition but potentially you could have a high-def video camera beside your standard def one and shoot frames at the same time, essentially turning the Claymation Studio into a video assist.

[daveindezmenez]

I just found out about two more animation software packages - and they are both open source and free:

For 2-D animation, I found a program called Synfig Studio which is a vector-based animation program like Flash is. I still have to try it out to see if the files are compatible with each other. You can to http://www.synfig.org to find Synfig Studio. There is a tutorial on YouTube that tells how to install it on a Windows system (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDqiRI7fwk). (It's not as straight forward to install as most software). They did have a Mac version but it is offline right now due to bugs. I also found a demo reel of things that had been done with it at (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK2DMBkd09I).

I attended the Grasshorse Technologies Animation Workshop and there I found out about a rather sophisticated 3D animation package called Blender. They use it and Maya to do their 3D animation work. In fact they are working on their own software called Proto Motion using code from it which they said would combine the worlds of 3D and stop motion animation. Blender can be found at http://www.blender.org.

[daveindezmenez]

Another piece of software for doing stop motion animation, this one for Macintoshes:

Frame Thief 2.1.9 ($40 Shareware)
System Requirements: It will work on Macs using Mac OS X or Mac OS 9.2 or later and a Power PC processor (not sure about the intel-base macs).
http://www.framethief.com

Frame Thief will work with any number of cameras including webcams for capturing frames. It includes features for using onionskin, syncing to audio, and taking several frames and averaging them for a cleaner image. If you are wanting to do stop motion animation, this may be an inexpensive way to go about it.

[daveindezmenez]

I was looking at a few news stories on the BBC website yesterday (from when this was posted) and I ran into an interesting story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8022623.stm) about a fan-made film that was a take-off from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The film was called "The Hunt for Gollum" (http://www.thehuntforgollum.com/) and was made for 3000 pounds (whatever that works out to in dollars) and used about 60 volunteers to be made. I took a look at the trailer (the film itself goes online May 3rd and lasts 40 minutes) and the production values look quite impressive. It looks a whole lot better than the budget would suggest. I was wondering how they got their impressive helicopter shots over mountains and when I went to the film's website, I found out how. They used a program called Terragen to create virtual landscapes. I followed the link given and saw that there is a free version of the program available for download for both PC and Mac. It has some restrictions (you can't use it to make money and the rendering size is limited to, I think it said, 600x400 but it might be worth checking out.

Here is the link:

Terragen
http://www.planetside.co.uk/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Thoughts about the "Hunt for Gollum" movie itself:

I think it is worth taking a look at because it shows just what can be accomplished if you are willing to take the time, effort, and expend the creativity to do. You shouldn't limit yourself to movies that take place in apartments necessarily just because you don't have a huge budget. You can accomplish a lot if you are willing to sacrifice time.

Remember the production triangle I mentioned on an earlier post (perhaps on the previous board)? There are three corners on the production triangle: Cheap, Fast, Good. You can only choose two points of the triangle on any given project. You can do it Fast and Good but end up having to spend a lot of money to pull this off. You can do it Cheap and Fast but the quality will suffer immensely (there are too many cheap and fast independent films). Or, you can do it Cheap and Good but you need to be willing to spend the time it takes to figure out creative solutions to problems and how to mimic more expensive ways of doing things in inexpensive ways. (I'm thinking about starting a thread in a different section, calling it "Filming on the Cheap" to give hints on how to do this.)

The only reservations about this project I have are these: Because of it being a fan-based project with restrictions from the owners of the material from which it is based, these people can't be financially rewarded for their efforts. To them, fans, this may not be such a big deal since they are doing it for the love of it but for me, personally, it isn't such a hot arrangement since I would like to have a way of supporting future efforts as well as being able to put my energies into films rather than having them diluted by "the day job". Secondly, on a creative level, I would find it somewhat unsatisfying because someone else (Peter Jackson and company) has already done the heavy lifting and the creative spade work and it wouldn't feel very much my own creation but rather a good job of mimicry. I do suppose you could use it on a reel for getting jobs though.